The Serpent's Root

My second Saphir tale, "The Serpent's Root" made the grade for Rogue Blades Entertainment's Challenge anthology. The theme was Discovery and of course being an RBE title it had to be of a Heroic nature.



Here is the released Table of Contents



•“A Fire in Shandria” ~ Frederic S. Durbin
•“In the Ruins of the Panther People” ~ Daniel R. Robichaud
•“The Serpent’s Root” ~ David J. West
•“Fire Eye Gem” ~ Richard Berrigan Jr.
•2nd PLACE: “Cat’s in the Cradle” ~ Nicholas Ozment
•“Some Place Cool and Dark” ~ Frederic S. Durbin
•“The Ash-Wood of Celestial Flame” ~ Gabe Dybing
•“Witch with Bronze Teeth” ~ Keith J. Taylor
•“Inner Nature” ~ John Kilian
•1st PLACE: “Attabeira” ~ Henrik Ramsager
•Honorable Mention: “Songs of the Dead” ~ Eric Magliozzi
•Honorable Mention: “The Golden Maiden” ~ Michael Navarro

I originally wrote the tale for Sword & Sorceress 25, but it was turned down as being too different from the rest, though they did encourage me to keep shopping it around.
Part of the Challenge for the judged anthology was to adhere to the cover art by V Shane, so I looked at it again, pondered how to put a panther and ruins into the yarn and modified and twisted it up again. Also thanks to Bruce Durham for his input in making the tale stronger=great advice.

In any case, I wanted to write about a daring female thief and thus Saphir was born on the mean streets of Zarahemla. I blended a number of odd influences for the story. Here for example is a pic that was a huge inspiration for the story. Known as Squaw Rock, it has unfortunately been defaced and vandalized- the face and breasts chipped away - but ever since I saw pic's of the riverside relief carving I wanted to write a story about it.




The anthology should be available for Christmas.
So let me know if y'all want more Saphir stories. Here is the first one, "Song of Saphir". Oh yeah and for what it's worth I pronounce it Sa-Fear. I found the name in my Strongs Dictionary of Bible Words-it means 'beautiful'.