My first novel, Swordspoint, was set in a city that remains nameless to this day. Despite that, I have never found it difficult to find my way there, and now have three novels and a few short stories set in that place. I invite you to join me there.

The setting is an unnamed city, the capital of an unnamed city state. It is currently ruled by a Council of Lords who overthrew the monarchy over 200 years earlier. Some readers call the city "Riverside," but that's just the name of the little island in the river where Swordspoint's protagonists live. It's inspired by all the cities I have read about, studied, and walked in, and loved the best: Elizabethan London, 18th century Paris, modern New York, and a few dozen others....

The world and its people were introduced in the very first short story I ever published professionally! "Red-Cloak" featured the swordsman Richard St Vier and his acerbic companion Alec together making trouble in a district called Riverside. I lived on West 110th Street, on Manhattan's Upper West Side. In those days it was a tough, edgy place: today's luxury condo's were then SRO's for guys who howled at night and girls who charged by the hour, or cramped refuges for new immigrants, or the dusty warrens of scholars, actors and musicians. I adored it. But I wondered what it would be like to be able to walk on the streets without always having to look over your shoulder. I was also reading a lot Fritz Leiber's "Lankhmar" stories then, some Sherlock Holmes, Georgette Heyer, Dorothy Dunnett, and the occasional Blue Boy....

"Red-Cloak" was my first sale, and for awhile it was about the only one: I kept trying to write more Riverside stories, but everyone told me they read like chapters from a novel. So I gave up and, after much agony and many false starts, finally managed to write Swordspoint.

As I explain in the Afterword to the new edition from Bantam (February, 2003), I never intended to write anything else in the same setting. But then I changed my mind. There followed a few more short stories, collected and published in the 2003 reprinting of Swordspoint (Bantam/Spectra). In 1998, Delia Sherman and I published a novella about Alec's posthumous son Theron; it was the genesis of our novel The Fall of the Kings (Bantam/Spectra, 2002), which takes place about 60 years after Swordspoint.

I am so fortunate to have Delia Sherman as my writing partner for The Fall of the Kings! Delia had read and loved Swordspoint back when it first came out, and was only too happy to lend her not inconsiderable knowledge of history, academia and human nature to the continuing story of that world - and to its ancient past, as well. (For more on our collaboration, see how we got that story.)  

Now things get a little confusing. Many years ago, I started working on a story about a young girl, the niece of Alec from Swordspoint, coming to the city to live with him. I kept stopping and starting as my life went through various permutations ... Then, one night, a visitor from the Antipodes took ill on my couch, and asked me to read her a story. I took out the manuscript, and ... well, I’ll let her tell you about it.  

It wasn’t until The Fall of the Kings was published, though, that my agent said, “So, what’s next? Don’t you have a half-finished manuscript about these people?” I dug out the various files and notebooks, and got to work. The Privilege of the Sword was published in 2006. No one’s sure whether it’s an adult novel about a teenage girl, or a Young Adult novel that should be R rated, and I don’t much care. My biggest problem was coming up with a title for it.  

Which book should you read first?  

I wrote each one to stand alone. But to follow the fortunes and adventures of my city’s denizens in their proper order, consult the Chronology below.