The Steel Remains

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

In case the influences worn so prominently on the sleeve of this novel should remain unclear, thanks are due to the following, for initial, momentous inspiration, way back when:

To Michael Moorcock for Hawkmoon, Elric, and Corum.

To the memory of Karl Edward Wagner for Kane.

To the memory of Poul Anderson for The Broken Sword and The Dancer from Atlantis.

There are a lot of little anchoring glints of realism embedded in the fantasy of The Steel Remains, and for making some of these possible, I’m indebted to Robert Low, author of The Whale Road, and to Jon Weir. I’m also grateful to Alan Beatts for sowing a seed with his comments about sanity, and to Gillian Redfearn for hemming and hawing about the dimensions of staff lances.

For the rest, endless appreciation once again to my editors Simon Spanton and Chris Schluep, for—quite literally—buying into the idea in the first place, and then for putting up with the butchered and mutilated bodies of deadlines when things took longer than expected to whip into the shape I wanted. And thanks also to my agent Carolyn Whitaker for her continuing weather eye and all-around support.

And finally, and most of all, thanks to Virginia, for living day in, day out with the brooding excesses and antisocial abandon of Morgan the Barbarian, for the time it took to complete the work.