Asu and the Demon Wolf

This story was my first professional sale, and you can read it for free at HFQ (Issue #62).

I’d recommend reading it, obviously, but the rest of the text on this page is going to cover some Story Notes, and possibly some spoilers.

The main plot of this tale comes across as a pretty basic tale, and in fact that’s what Adrian Simmons, editor at HFQ, told me after reading it. Also noted by Victoria Silverwolf when she reviewed it over on Tangent, expressing “much of the story follows a familiar pattern.” Am I not selling you on this one? Just wait.

This story took time to find a home, but I knew it was good and knew it deserved to breathe air in a public space.

How it Came Together

In 2021, I attended Michael Stackpole’s annual writing workshops at DragonCon. In one of his classes, he talked about story recipes, particularily the framework of a “Bug Hunt.” And as he was talking, things started to click into place. The previous year I had been participating in the National Write a Novel in a Month (NanoWriMo) event, and had unleashed a fury of unmitigated trash. It was intentional trash. The kind of stuff you only write when you’re not worried about disappointing your parents, or having people look over your shoulder. Liberating in its absurdity of pulp-inspired, shock-value excesses. Regardless, it formulated into the beginnings of a novel and the foundations of a fantasy world. A small paragraph from that novel talked about a man, a Shepherd-Lord named Abranor, an old and powerful sheepherder and polygamist, hailing from the plains east of the novel’s setting. When Michael Stackpole laid out the Bug Hunt recipe, everything locked into place. I knew immediately the character of this new story would be the seventeenth son of Abranor. Asu was ugly, hobbled at birth, and his mother was a witch his father had fallen in love with.

Along with that, I had been reading in the Book of Genesis at the time, a New Living Translation Reading Bible (where they strip out the chapters and verses to make it flow as a cohesive narrative). As a result, I had been itching to write a story in the vibe of the pastoral family drama of Genesis. Abranor and his family take a lot of cues from the dysfunction of Abraham, Jacob and Esau, and the sons of Israel.

I wanted something inspired and dredged up from the bowels of classical antiquity. Places like Caanan, Ur, Sumeria, Assyria. But mostly of a time when multi-generational families wandered open fields. A place where wild magic haunted the lands.

I did do a little bit of research on nomadic pastoral culture, which still exists in the modern era. National Geographic always has great articles about the culture of nomadic tribes. Although I have to confess, I don’t recall the specific articles now.

Regardless, after DragonCon, and after some research, I sat down and wrote Asu and the Demon Wolf in the span of a week. When I showed it to my wife Annie, her response: “well, you did it. You wrote a complete story” (my biggest weak point is not finishing a story, something I’m remedying). Feedback from readers tended to be the same: a straight-forward, interesting story that had an interesting setting. A lot of readers gravited towards Asu’s mother (who is a pivotal character in Asu’s journey, but remains unamed in the text).

Shopping it Around

I was scared. I felt good about the story, but my confidence continually undermined me. I didn’t know if it was worthy of publication. These are the thoughts that haunted me at the time. But I realized I needed to use this as an opportunity to put myself out there. I figured I could at least send it to the Writers of the Future Contest. I was surprised when it received an honorable mention.

Afterwards, I shopped it around in several publications. Editors typically found the work admirable in parts, but it just wasn’t what they were looking for. This is something I understood. Different magazines have their markets, and this sword-and-sorcery adventure story just wasn’t what they were looking for. A part of me thinks they would’ve perked up when the family dynamics started to play itself out after the story’s initial action sequence, but I have no idea if they made it that far or not. I suspect most editors stopped after the first couple scenes. It was enough for them to know it wasn’t for them, and that’s fine.

It eventually found a home in 2024 with Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, and Adrian Simmons understood what the story was trying to accomplish. He noted the basic plot, but also recognized the unique setting and cultural elements. He also found the dynamic between Asu and his mother to be interesting.

He did take two major issues with the structure of the story, however. And if I was willing to work with him on edits, he would be willing to look at it further. Not a committment to a sale, but close enough I considered it worth the effort.

(Note: I’ll most likely edit this page in the future with more details about this editorial process. It’s a bit in the weeds, but I would like to write more about this in detail, in case anyone is interested in the process I went through).

Working with Simmons was really nice, and it made the story even better. One major change was the pacing and structure of the final action sequence (where Asu tricks Kahnkaru into swallowing the magical bell). Originally, that scene consisted of the present-action, which made call-backs to the battle-preparation in order to give context to the actions Asu took. Simmons recognized what I was trying to do, but it was too clunky. He advised I split this into scenes. The reason I had originally done this was word economy. At the time I wrote the initial story, I was shooting for a hard 5000 word limit, and this was a way to achieve what I wanted. Since this didn’t matter so much anymore, I was more than obliged to split the scene up; though pacing still concerned me as I did the rewrite.

The other main revision request revolved around the premonition that occurs at the end of the story, after Asu has conquered his foe Kahnkaru and its spirit became trapped in his spear. Originally, the premonition was just a few paragraphs, and Simmons felt it deserved to be expanded. This allowed me some more space to delve into the consequences of Asu taking possession of the spear (and Kahnkaru taking posession of him). As a result, I feel the story became much more impactful. The final scene in the premonition, where a barren and grief-stricken Layla confronts Asu in his infidelity and his descent into darkness, has become one of my favorite scenes in the story. It would not have existed without working with Adrian Simmons on revisions. It became a much better story as a result.