The following is the long-anguishing outline of my only fantasy concept, which is too bad. As a boy all I wrote was fantasy, and accounted for most of my output as a young man. Since age 30 I have avoided fantasy as an adolescent art form. However, the fact that I have not written a fantasy marks me as defective as an author—something I wish to address. Insisting on a science-fiction premise for a story is as much a crutch as Tolkien’s orks and dwarves and Marvel’s leftist superheroes in tights. Besides, as my friend, Mark French, just spake this past fast day [which I was heathenishly not observing at the moment], "Arthur C. Clarke did say that, 'Technology, sufficiently advanced, is indistinguishable from magic.'"

I intend to write Beyond the Pale as a “pure” fantasy, meaning that what was believed in the past shall be presented as reality, myth as fact, fantastic beliefs as actualities. The story will be written from a strictly catholic viewpoint, inspired largely by a collection of six Novena incense packets I found in the ethnic food section of a supermarket, targeting Mexican Catholics. I have long thought that God’s permission for Aztecs and Conquistadors to crossbreed is the best evidence to date that His Omniscience has a dark sense of humor.

The map of Christendom was drawn on my lunch break last week, and the story of David Able Saul is rising in my dream space, so it must be given room here, lest I suffer the fate of Heshman Shew Mote…

For a discussion of the origins of the term Beyond the Pale consult the link below:

© 2013 James LaFond

Mantid [former title]

The Seven Fantastic Heresies of Heshman Shew Mote [retained as the subtitle]

Fantasy novelette [expected to be a trilogy of novellas]

David Able Saul is a Recorder for His Augment of Truth, one of only 40 sophists in all of Christendom. On an inauspicious morning, as he transcribes the archives of an Inquirer of His Augment of Truth, he detects a heresy. Should he expose the heresy? David’s choice will propel him along a path that a lowly copyist could scarcely have expected to travel.

Journal 31 of Heshman Shew Mote

Sabbath Eve, Third Shutter of the Purple Moon

The Heresy of Heshman Shew Mote

His Augment of Truth

The Heretic Sky

The Inquiring Hand of His Augment of Truth

His Augment of Right

The Might of His Augment of Right

Under the White Moon

Beyond the Hearth of Christ

Shrove Truthday’s Battle

Blood Moon Rising

The Wells of Pallor Shorn

Ascent of the Mantid

Beyond the Pale Night Sky

Epilogue