Sword & Sorcery

Novella Waste Flowers out now
Order from Brackenbury Books

Goatskin the goat nomad and her bandit love Sister Chaos guide merchants from Samarkand across the Gobi desert to the Mongols. But their caravan veers from one weird assault to weirder and worse. Who is behind this grotesquerie?
Will they lose their way, or even lose their minds?

Waste Flowers is published in Double-Edged Sword & Sorcery, back to back with another Mongol-inspired novella, Walls of Shira Yulun by Dariel R. A. Quiogue.

Goatskin tales and where to find them

Goatskin cycle: a timeline

‘Goat Against the City God’

A Book of Blades II: A Sword & Sorcery Anthology from Rogues in the House Podcast (2023). 2900 words.

In which Angaj-Duzmut, advised to settle her feud with the city god of Fattimbet, exacerbates it instead.

‘The Grief-Note of Vultures’

New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine #0 (2022). 5400 words.

In which Angaj-Duzmut guides a trader’s van past a temple haunted by its own cruel monuments to conquest.

‘A Day in Irighaya, or The Invention of Love’

Beating Hearts & Battle-Axes, Brackenbury Books (expected June 2025). 12,000 words.

In which Angaj and her bandit girl enjoy a day out in Irighaya, rambunctious for them, disastrous for the city.

‘Sister Chaos’

New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine #1 (2023). 6000 words.

In which Angaj-Duzmut and Qi Miao escape to the Alashan desert and discover the persecuted last shaman of Tangut with the wild spirit he protects.

Waste Flowers

A Brackenbury Books Double Edge (2025). 35,000 words.

In which Goatskin and Qi Miao join a camel train of merchants who strike out across the Gobi to trade with the great Mongol most people are afraid of, Tchingis Khan.

What Rough Beast?

Brackenbury Books. 35,000 words. Standalone novella expected April 2026.

‘The Change’

To be published in New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine 5, late 2025. 2500 words.

Old Goatskin after she has followed the Mongol wars.

 

See my posts about the individual tales, and why I moved into S&S

Chinggis Khan goes S&S: our Mongol Double
A few interviews  — links to interviews I gave on our Double; lovely in-depth stuff
On story process: Sister Chaos
Why New Edge Sword & Sorcery?

And yet more interviews — around my 2nd novella, What Rough Beast?

at Grimdark Magazine
at Black Gate
at Sad but Building Worlds