The seventh shuttle gearing up to emerge from starship Candlemark’s Reckless digital imprint is Andrew Knighton’s novella Silver and Gold. The story is an Aztec-inspired fantasy of art, friendship, and rebellion that seamlessly blends myth and history to present the thorny choices that always confront creators of passion, ambition and talent. 

Andrew Knighton is a freelance writer and an author of fantasy and alternate history. He has ghost-written fourteen novels, co-written The Bear’s Claws, a Cold War alternate history, and had over fifty short stories published in magazines, websites, and anthologies. He was a finalist in the Top Cow Comics talent hunt and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize for short fiction.

I’m also thrilled to be able to share the cover for Silver and Gold which mirrors its content, as seen from the synopsis below. The central image is a beloved brooch about which I wrote in Sympathetic Magic; the background comes from the talented Alan C. Caum whose covers, maps and witty interior illustrations (camouflaged as context-rich ads) grace many Candlemark works.

The goldsmith Cualli lives in a land of endless summer, where blood sacrifices hold back the dark of winter. Through her craft, she grants power to priests and soldiers, channelling the magic of Emperor Sun. But what matters to Cualli is not power; it is proving herself as the empire’s finest goldsmith.

Not everyone feels blessed by the empire’s blood-stained faith. Dissent is turning to rebellion and the rebels want Cualli on their side, whether she likes it or not. When the season of sacrifice threatens the lives of her closest friends, Cualli must face a choice: will she fight for change through the illegal magic of silver, or will she bask in her own triumph and the endless golden summer?

The Reckless companions of Silver and Gold are Athena Andreadis’ Wisps of Spider Silk (high-stakes interstellar diplomacy), M. Fenn’s Piper Deez and the Case of the Winter Planet, (noir interplanetary sleuthing), Elana Gomel’s Dreaming the Dark (oneiric frissons of Inuit mythology), Christine Lucas’s Fates and Furies (haunting transmutations of Hellenic myth and history), Martha A. Hood’s The Miasma Is Not for Us to Say (witty small-town ghost shenanigans, launching this July), and Melanie Stormm’s The Last Poet of Wyrld’s End (an elegiac, picaresque SFnal take on Li Bai, launching this September).

We expect to share Silver and Gold in November 2020. Keep your calendar wheels aligned!