Jimmy the Hand (48 page)

In
Murder in
LaMut,
Joel and I got to ‘clone’ three of my
favourite characters from his universe, changing them just a little
bit to make them Midkemian, yet echoing their well-chronicled history
in Joel’s
Guardian of the Flames
series. My original
idea for that story went back years ago to a notion I once had of
doing a solo book about Roald, the mercenary friend of Laurie, who
was featured in
Silverthorn,
set in a blizzard-strangled city
where murder was done. This worked out better, I think.

Bill wanted to
write Xenophon’s retreat through Persia as a fantasy and I
wanted to write a
Sharpe’s Rifles-style
story, so we
came up with
Honoured Enemy.
Bill’s strong background in
military history and his familiarity with historical figures gave me
strong characters that I cherish along with those I’ve
developed; but I could never have imagined them on my own.

All three
authors were fun to work with, and as always I learned from getting
to peek inside another author’s head. I hope my readers find
these books as much of a treat as I do. I look forward to working
with other talented writers in the future.

Raymond E. Feist
San Diego, CA 2003