So I’ve a new Kyra-from-Pennyblade story coming out in Of Enchantment, Enigma And The Infinite, an anthology of tales involving magic. The story is called The Point Of Art and is the first thing to feature the scurrilous problem-pixie and disaster-sapphic Kyra Cal’Adra since her debut in Pennyblade. So why bring her back? And why in a short story?

Stories can come about in many ways. Sometimes an idea pops up when you’re washing up, or a character makes themselves known to you in the shower. Sometimes two half-ideas that have been rattling in your skull for years suddenly bang into each other and fuse. Other times more practical reasons inform your creativity, a looming deadline, say, or a specific request, and who’s to say they are not just as worthy a means of conception?

The Point Of Art was a response to a request, in this case to Stars & Sabers asking for a story involving magic. Now, I’m a fantasy author but I’m not a ‘magic guy’ like, say, Brandon Sanderson with his highly detailed magic systems. Magic just isn’t my first interest like it is for Bran-San when he makes a world. So I got stuck.

I had an idea for a shaman who hangs about fresh battlefields to collect spirits. I had the idea of a call centre in an industrial estate built on a sacrificial druidic grove. Neither stuck (and now they are very much in the half-ideas rattling about my skull department as mentioned above), but then I remembered an article a book blogger wrote listing their favourite magic systems in novels (I’ve just been Googling like a mad man but I can’t find it. Surely I didn’t dream it?) and they cited Pennyblade. Which surprised me.

Thank you mysterious blogger. You gave me the courage to rediscover a magic system I already had, namely ‘imbuing’, the unearthly power to manipulate physical material with mere touch. The imbuing is instinctual to commrach, the pretty-much-elves featured in Pennyblade. With it, they can cause blades to be supernaturally sharp, clay to catch moonlight and statues to seem almost alive. A writer can do a lot with that, I realised, certainly more than I had in my novel.

I’d no plan to use Kyra. There would, after all, be far better commrach for such a story, some Elven Michelangelo say, or some Oscar Wilde analogue that might talk of art at length. But…

…the more I thought about it the more things took me from a commrach and their innate magic story to a humans looking at commrach and their innate magic story. An outsider-looking-in tale, one that might say something about we humans and our attitudes to beauty and aesthetics and how it all relates to politics and society. You know, that sort of tale. Thus it would have to take place in human lands. And so we’d need a commrach already travelling through the realms of men…

Kyra’s always a joy to write. She’s one of those characters who practically writes herself. This time however she’s seen from the outside which is a whole new experience both for her on the page and me typing it. In The Point Of Art we watch her through the eyes of a haughty Duke who intends to use Kyra’s imbuing powers against his political rival. He’s not entirely impressed with what he sees. Kyra seems very different from outside eyes. She comes off as insanely cocksure because we can’t hear her thoughts.

I intend to write a full-length sequel-of-sorts to Pennyblade sometime soon. But in the meantime I hope my new story is enough of a catch-up for longtime readers. But, as a standalone, I feel The Point is rather good, with a lot to say about art and politics and perception. I hope you think it’s good too. But if not, well, there’s another twenty or so stories to read in Of Enchantment, Enigma & The Infinite, each by an incredible author.

More about the anthology HERE.