“When my motivation to write wanes, I listen to Stefan Rudnicki read George R. R. Martin’s story ‘The Lonely Songs of Laren Dorr.’ It’s a high fantasy short story about a world-hopping warrioress and a melancholy minstrel. In only 7,300 words this story manages to create an intriguing mythos, but only in brief glimpses that feel designed to invite the reader to daydream—to speculate about the impossible. The setting is an ever-changing, phantasmagoric world that gives beautiful images but few answers. Something about hearing the recurrent description of a purple sun brings me back to my school years of reading fantasy, and suddenly it becomes easier for me to rebuild the motivation necessary to keep writing.”
—Dennis E. Staples, author of This Town Sleeps (Counterpoint, 2020)
Photo credit: John LaTourelle