The One-Eyed Man is a novel that was one I never intended to write. Some two years ago, my editor, the esteemed David Hartwell, approached me and several other authors and asked us to write a short story based on a painting by John Jude Palencar. I started writing, and I kept writing, and by the time I got to 15,000 words or so, and was just beginning to get into the story, I realized two things: first, that I was nowhere close to finishing the story, and, that, in fact, it wasn’t a story; and second, that I wasn’t going to finish the Imager Portfolio book I was also working on by the time I’d promised it to David. So… I put aside the story that had become at least the beginning of a novella, if not a novel, and wrote a much shorter story entitled “New World Blues,” which was published by Tor.com in February of 2012 as part of the “Palencar Project,” consisting of five stories, all based on the painting, by different writers.
[Read more]