Over the last week of October and the first week of November, 2022, I published three episodes of The Knave of Nodderton on Amazon Vella.

Honestly, I won’t even bother citing the stats. They’re dismal. Let’s agree I’m writing for myself and shouting into a void. I have yet to even see The Knave run across “newly updated” or “recently added” stories; I just don’t rank with the algorithm.

Again, I think this is just a failure of Amazon’s platform. There should be a lock against a story categorized as “romance” appearing in “fantasy”; even a “fantasy romance”. It dilutes the algo so that everything “romance” appears at the top of every list. I mean, just let me compete against other “fantasy” stories, okay? Jesh!

Anyhow, these three stories are a dip in the action. I’m moving Gammond around Auchenshuggle and describing it a bit in the process. I’m reintroducing some characters mentioned in the 1st and 3rd episodes and giving Gammond some needed sleep.

I did write a bit about halfling luck in the 8th episode and I really enjoyed that. Luck is a major facet of Gammond stories, and this story presented an opportunity to cover that.

Halflings in D&D are considered “lucky” and I imply as much when I’m writing. They can’t roll ones, and what that means is, during the course of the game, if they fail at something, they get to re-roll. When I wrote about Gammond in Aevalorn Tales, I wrote about the distinction of bravery and luck for Gammond. When I work with Gammond, I’m usually doing an interplay between good and bad luck - something extraordinary can happen with him either way.

In this story, Gammond “luckily” enters Auchenshuggle and isn’t spotted; he “luckily” encounters Gar Pok, an imprisoned sympathizer, who can lead him to Brath Dannig; he’s “luckily” allowed into Brath’s home by his sister who sees a halfling at her door as “good luck”; and he “luckily” gets some free food and a nap. Lining up all of the fortunate coincidences without making it appear contrived is part of the challenge.

Also, in episode 9, Danros “luckily” learns the Chamberlain’s real name, Remus Scorpio, and continues to be burdened with the red-haired halfling dogging his future. Readers can see where I’m setting up an inevitable collision between Danros and Gammond, but first, I have to reveal something out of my hat in the next episode.

Also, importantly, we've learned in episode 9 that Danros used to be a member of a theater troop out of Nodderton; in episodes 2, 4, and 5, I eluded to Nodderton having a theater culture. So Danros used to be a bard who became a thief to survive.

I’ve also revealed a physical toll for using the Palantir. It’s a limitation imposed on Danros to create a little bit of drama.

The story’s about half-way finished. I’ve revealed Scorpio as the actual antagonist, Danros is an an anti-hero, and Gammond’s my protagonist, and somehow these two characters are going to meet up to take on Scorpio. It’s around 16,000 words at the moment so with a little more embellishing, I could spin it around into a 40,000 word novella at some point.

Anyhow, thanks for reading!