AlphaMercs has published out a pair of loosely connected anthologies filled with stories inspired by the music of Jethro Tull. I’m excited to say that my story, “Wizard, Not Lost” will be in the Fantasy volume, Tales from the Wood is now available. Naturally, I will update this post with a link to pre-order or buy the book as soon as it’s live. The sci-fi stories, Minstrels in the Galaxy is also available at this time!
About the Stories in the Key of Tull Anthologies
The call for stories sent out by Sam and Shari Robb was for fiction that pays tribute to the discography of the band Jethro Tull. With over 50 years of music that spans from folk to heavy metal, covering topics that include the afterlife and otherworldly themes, Tull offers a great deal of inspiration.
Every story has a song associated with it, and I believe the goal was to only have one story per song. There’s a definite playlist that goes with this set of books.
About the Story “Wizard, Not Lost”
I’ll admit it, I’ve been a bit aware of Jethro Tull since I raided my dad’s LP collection, but only a bit. However, when I saw this call for stories I knew it was a great opportunity to collaborate with Josh. You see, he is a huge fan of Jethro Tull, and had all of the deep-dive fan cred required to make this a really unique story.
Josh’s cat, Gus, is named after a mysterious figure in Act Four of the album A Passion Play. Magus Perdé is a figure who lives in (or adjacent to) hell, and who for some unknown reason agrees to help the album’s protagonist leave hell to be reborn on Earth. When I asked him what story we should tell, Josh said, “I want to know why Magus Perdé helps Ronnie. He as an ulterior motive. What is it?”
Beyond supplying the opening question for my story, Josh also gave me the link to a website deeply analyzing the song, access to his LP and its liner notes, further notes about a different creative work featuring the same mythos with a different protagonist character (Evelyn, who appears in the story), and details about the video that plays behind the band during this performance (which is echoed in the story).
All I had to do then was write it. Honestly, I got to geek out a lot in this tale, and applied a lot of underworld myth and details from grad school into the mix. It was really fun. Perdé – though it suggests that the wizard is lost – knows exactly where he is. He just also doesn’t want to give anything up in order to leave.