Once a Hero now in epub

In keeping with the release of Talion: Revenant in epub, I went ahead and put Once a Hero together in epub format, too.

Once a Hero was my very first published fantasy novel. It is still one of my best. In fact, were only one of my books to survive some holocaust, to be recovered a thousand years from now, and Once a Hero was it, I would be more than happy. Even when I was reading through it to make corrections and do the formatting, I found myself rereading passages and being surprised by just how good the book is.

So, here are a couple things that no one knows about this book. Once a Hero was originally outlined as a Forgotten Realms™ novel for TSR. Back in the early 1990s the TSR novels had gotten so popular that the editorial staff opened things up for authors to send ideas for books. Since the books were all hitting the bestseller lists, this was being offered a high-stakes lottery ticket. I’d done a small piece in a Forgotten Realms™ product called Lords of Darkness. In it I had written a brief piece of fiction, and offered that as a sample of what I could do, to go along with the proposed novel.

TSR rejected the book. They felt it was too complex for their audience. At the time, given the outline, I was kind of surprised by that, but that was their call. I shelved the outline and got back to writing BattleTech novels.

Then I ran into Janna Silverstein at a World Fantasy Convention. She’d wanted to buy Talion: Revenant for Bantam Books, but hadn’t been allowed to. She still remembered who I was, and said she’d be happy to look at a proposal for a novel. Great! I found the outline, tore out everything that was TSR specific and…

…found myself without a world, cultures, characters—you know, all the stuff that actually makes up a book. So I put all that together, stitched the outline back together, and sent it off. Janna asked me for sample chapters, which ended up being chapters one and two. After Bantam gave me a contract and I started writing, I added the prologue.

Now, the curious thing about the book was this: I was about halfway through writing it when Janna sent the text for the back cover blurb. Right there, on the back cover, it mentioned that my hero, Neal, dies and is brought back to life. I looked at that and I was sunk. That was going to be my climax! Talk about ruining the surprise.

So, I called Janna and she explained that this particular aspect of the book was “what made it a Spectra book.” That meant the back cover copy would stand as written. So, I began shifting how the story was written, and much for the better. Since everyone knew Neal would die and get resurrected, it wasn’t a question of if, but when and how. That allowed me to play a lot with reader expectations (which I greatly enjoy doing), and really made the book as special as it is.

No sequel challenge on this book. If I ever do write a sequel, it will have to be very special. I do have some ideas, but until they coalesce into something really spectacular, I’m not going to turn out another novel in this world. Some shorter pieces, maybe, we’ll see.

The epub format is suitable for any ebook reader except the Kindle. (If you want to buy Once a Hero to read on your Kindle, hit this link.) If you want to buy Once a Hero in epub, just click this link. If you don’t have a reader, you can download Adobe Digital Editions for free, and read from the same computer you’re staring at now.