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I wasn’t as done with the edits of STRANGE CANDY as I thought. The story “Winterkill” had been added late to the editing process, and had it’s own separate author queries which I had to go over. The story almost didn’t make it into the anthology at all, because everyone forgot it existed. It was only as I was writing small intros for each story that I got to the end of all the story titles and realized we were missing one. Neither Jon nor Darla had ever read this one. So, if I hadn’t been going back over the titles, no one would have caught it. I knew exactly which one was missing, but couldn’t remember the title exactly. But I did remember which anthologies it might have appeared in; Marion Zimmer Bradley’s SWORD AND SORCERESS #7 or #8. Well, we had copies of the books, and there it was. Strangely, I did not have a single printed manuscript copy, or file copy of this story. All the other stories, published and unpublished existed in hard copy and computer file, but not “Winterkill”, for whatever reason it only existed in the published anthology. Very unlike me not to keep a hard copy in my files. If I hadn’t decided to do intros to the story ala Marion Zimmer Bradley, herself, the story might have been lost. I’m very glad that it wasn’t. I had other stories planned with Jessa and Gregoor, my two fantasy assassins. The other stories never materialized, but this first adventure is still here, and about to be published afresh. Pretty cool.
Darla deserves extra credit for this story being in the anthology, because she had to type it in from the published copy. Type it in and make sure that it matched. Tedious, to say the least. Just got back from dinner, and was reminded that Darla was not the only one who went over “Winterkill” to make sure it matched. Richard, also, helped, checking and comparing the two versions of the story to make sure they matched. When you read the story sometime in the fall, you can thank both Darla and Richard that it’s there.