Tanya Huff - What Ho, Magic!.pdf - Tanya Huff - widez2

What Ho, Magic!

Tanya Huff

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any

resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.

Tanya Huff. Originally appeared in MZB's Fantasy Magazine, Fall 1993 "Word of Honor" Copyright (c)

1995 by Tanya Huff. Originally appeared in Tales of the Knights Templar, Warner, 1995 "The Harder

Olympus, DAW, 1997

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Tanya Huff. Originally appeared in Vampire Detectives, DAW, 1995 "What Manner of Man" Copyright

here for the first time.

written permission of the publisher, except for the purpose of reviews.

WHAT HO, MAGIC!

An MM Publishing Book

Published by Meisha Merlin Publishing, Inc.

PO Box7

Decatur,GA30.031

Editing & interior layout by Stephen Pagel Copyediting & proofreading by Teddi Stransky Cover art by

Todd Lockwood Cover design by Neil Seltzer

ISBN: 1-892.065-04-5

http: //www. angelfire. com/biz/MeishaMerlin

First MM Publishing edition: March 1999

Printed in theUnited States of America0987654321

Tanya Huff is...

This book is the first collection of some of Tanya's short stories, and the stories, bristling with an elegant

wit that never becomes either self-indulgent or pretentious, speak more clearly for themselves than I ever

could.

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I'd like to concentrate on the work, and the work alone, but there's so much of Tanya in the work she

does it would be like telling half a story when I know more of it: doesn't feel right. Besides, anyone who's

reading this has already bought the book, a sure indication that I'd be singing to the choir.

So, briefly, Tanya Huff is scum. A maggot. Moreover, I mean both words in the nicest possible way.

Perhaps a little background is in order.

The first time I met Tanya, I was fifteen years old. I was at my first convention, and very nervous; she

was at her umpteenth, and very confident. She was also dressed up as Belit. I couldn't think of anything

clever to say to her - a recurring theme - so I didn't say anything at all because, well, I was intimidated.

Nevertheless, I remembered her clearly.

The second time I met Tanya was as a customer at Bakka, the science fiction bookstore inToronto

where we'd later spend six of her eight-year tenure working together. She had just sold a novella to Pat

Price at Amazing - the Kelly Chase story - and she was determined to sell a novel before she reached

the other side of thirty.

At that time, I was scribbling poetry and editing fledgling attempts at my own fiction, and she seemed to

have stepped across the impossibly wide divide that separates the published - and publishable - from the

unpublished. She was very matter of fact about the sale and her future career. I was impressed - and

intimidated - so I didn't mention the fact that I was writing.

I started working at Bakka very shortly after that, part-time to her full-time, and when I finally graduated

to full-time, we overlapped on four of our five days. During those years, as most of you probably did, I

read Tanya's fiction. But I got to read it before it was published.

It was torture.

Poets tend toward melodrama and abuse of the language; they're always at least a bit infatuated with

words and the cadence of words, and before they find their feet...well, it isn't pretty. That was me.

Misery loves company. Unfortunately, I never did get any, not that way.

Tanya has never had that problem. I'm fairly certain she knows what purple prose is, but I guarantee

she's also incapable of committing it.

"Here, Michelle," she'd say, "I think this is too slow. Or too boring. Or maybe not enough is happening.'"

So I'd read her very polished, highly amusing and often deeply moving writing - and then I'd slink off to

my computer with an inferiority complex the size of a small planet. This was her idea of not good enough!

Tanya, I thought, you are scum. But I wasn't about to say that because I didn't want it to be taken the

wrong way.

Well, the years went by. I managed to figure out that I wasn't Tanya Huff, and I wasn't going to be

Tanya Huff, so I settled into my own style of writing, rewriting and revising. I started, bit by bit, to feel

less intimidated. Maybe it was because of the times I'd watch her spend twenty minutes - in the back

room of the store - writing the same sentence over and over again until the cadence was exactly right.

Maybe it was the month she spent writing the same four pages of a novel over and over again because

she knew where the book was supposed to be going, but her instincts as a writer are far too strong - and

too good - to let her hack her way paint-by-numbers style through the plot; if she blocks, it's for a

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reason. The book veered sharply to the left, and once she and her subconscious settled on a reasonable

compromise, she took the driver's seat again.

I still read everything she wrote as she finished it. Novels were bad, as they came chapter by chapter;

short stories came in a complete chunk.

When she finished "I'll Be Home For Christmas" I had yet to start a story for the same anthology. I read

hers, and almost didn't start one. "No," I told her, "there's no way I'm writing anything contemporary; it'll

only get compared to that, and I can't come close."

I was very glad that I didn't have that problem with "Shing Li-Ung", one of my favourite stories, because

I wasn't asked to write a story for that anthology. As someone with some background in being a banana

- white on the inside, yellow on the outside, in case you haven't come across the term - I found the story

to be particularly moving and well thought out, and I liked the end.

In fact, I like the way most of Tanya's stories end. Although she's at home with a very dark edge - as the

two horror stories in the anthology clearly show - for the most part, she deals in hope. In ideals. In what

it takes to meet those ideals half way. Her characters know, like she does, that life is tough, and that

people aren't perfect - but they don't use the excuse of imperfection to become self-indulgent, whiny

jerks. They deal with their lives. They live up to their promise.

But I digress. I was speaking about scum.

As Tanya and I got more comfortable with each other's writing we began to depend, to some extent, on

each other's opinion. And one day, when she'd handed me yet another excellent chapter with a mournful,

"this is way too slow, nothing happens, and no one's going to finish the book if they even get this far," I

was going through a complete throw-the-book-away-and-rewrite-from-the-ground-up revision. Misery,

as I mentioned above, loves company.

I read the chapter.

In addition, when I finished it, I looked up, met her expectant gaze, and said, "You are a crawling

maggot."

"What?"

"You are scum. You are vile."

"Is that good?"

"I am in the middle of the rewrite from hell and you have the nerve to give me this and tell me that it's

awfulT Because, of course, it was wonderful.

She's not stupid. "Wow. Scum," she said.

It became our quick way of saying something was really good. It was shorthand for You've completely

hooked me and I couldn't put this down.

When she finished Blood Pact, she was living three hours outside of Toronto, but I still got to read the

book chapter by chapter, and when I finished it, I phoned her - this was before there were cheap long

distance rates in Canada - to call her scum. It took a long time. I loved that book.

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I also had to take three days off writing; I couldn't get it out of my head and when I went back to my

own work I could clearly see just where the cadence and humour, the earthiness of her characters, the

contemporary accessibility, were missing from mine. This happens every time I read a Huff novel.

Doesn't stop me from reading her books, though.

Nothing I can think of - short of the obvious - could do that.

So, Tanya Huff is scum.

And you're about to find out why; just turn the page.

- Michelle Sagara West October 1998

"The Chase is On", the oldest story in this collection by a considerable margin, is pure space opera. I

would never insult the many fine Writers of science fiction by referring to this story as such. There is no

science in it.

Space opera; fantasy with ray guns and space marines.

It's a sub genre I've always loved, space opera, and given the continuing reaction to Star Wars and Star

Trek, so have a whole lot of people. I've actually pitched a couple of ideas for Star Trek novels but,

unfortunately, they went nowhere.

As this collection appears, I'm working on my first novel-length space opera (untitled as yd) probably

out from DAW in the spring of 2000. It has nothing to do with Kelly Chase or her universe.

THE CHASE IS ON

"Blundering, incompetent idiot!" roared the Atabeg of Rayanton, Guiding Light of Forty Star Systems.

"A simple removal, and you fail dismally!"

The commander of the Atabeg's Immortals, some four thousand men whose loyalty was absolute, stared

straight ahead, carefully emotionless, ignoring the spittle that dotted the front of his dress uniform - the

physical evidence of his lord's rage. To show any emotion in the presence of the Atabeg was unwise,

although groveling was acceptable after a certain point in the interview.

"Exalted One," began the officer, wishing that he dared wet his lips. "If I may be permitted...we had to

deal with his escort first. There were a great many places he could hide, and we had a very small force."

"And may I remind you, Commander," the Atabeg snarled, "that we speak of an eight year old boy."

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw tanned fingers fiddling with something on the desk. "Pay attention,

Darvish," he snapped. "This concerns you."

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