Budayeen Nights: Stories

Introduction to Marîd Throws a Party

This was the first portion — two chapters — of the fourth Budayeen book, Word of Night, and the only part to actually have been written. When I met George in 1990 (not counting the several times we’d been in the same room and HADN’T met, but that’s another story), he was working on these. The Exile Kiss had just been published, and the editors asked him for an outline of Word of Night (untitled, then) so they could get a cover-painting done. George didn’t have an outline, but since they needed to know SOMETHING that happened in the book, he said it started out with a party at Marîd’s club, which was all he knew about what happened in the book at the time. Later he and I worked out an outline for it, a wonderful story which I had hoped, in the fullness of time, to see through to fruition.

When he died in 2002, these first two chapters were still all he had written.

Brilliant chapters, and what promised to be a wonderful book.

— Barb Hambly