The Mysteries of the Faceless King

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Look what came in the mail! The collected Best Short Fiction of Darrell Schweitzer in two volumes from PS Publishing. With cover, end papers, and signature page illustrated by (of course) World Fantasy Award winning artist Jason Van Hollander. Which I received because I wrote the introduction to Volume 1: The Mysteries of the Faceless King.

 

I am not going to make a sales pitch here, because that's not the way it works. PS Publishing carefully chooses authors they know have a loyal following, and create beautifully-made and well-edited volumes in limited editions. Which then routinely proceed to sell out. That's just the way it is.

 

But I have to say something. So I'll just give you the very beginning of my intro: 

Once upon a time . . .

 

None of the stories collected herein begin with those words, though some come close. But they might as well. For Darrell Schweitzer writes a very traditional sort of story. His fiction is almost always fantasy, which is a mode nested deep in the roots of Story; usually horror, a mode as old as nightmares; and very often weird fantasy, a much more recent mode but one that is dear to his heart. Most could have been written a hundred years ago—or, with equal ease, a hundred years in the future. This is not a criticism. Timelessness is precisely what he is after.

 

 My introduction goes on from there, touching upon various aspect of Darrell's career. To know what I said, you'll have to buy the book. But I can share the single virtue that most contributed to his having a two-volume "Best Of" collection of his fiction: Steadfastness.

 

When Darrell was first starting out as a writer, there was very little market for weird fiction, which was what he most wanted to write. He wrote it anyway and sold it to magazines most people have never heard of, often for laughably little recompense. Over the decades, he worked as a reviewer, book dealer, interviewer, writing instructor, literary agent, editor, and God knows what else. During which time he surely learned what an uncommercial genre it was he had given his heart to. He wrote it anyway. He never gave up. He never stopped writing what he loved best.

 

So you wanna know how to get to Carnegie Hall? Stay the course.

 

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