By Scott Pearson

My ReDeus character, Étienne Joubert, a Templar knight returned to life in the twenty-first century, came to me even before I was invited to participate in the ReDeus anthologies. I had imagined a fourteenth-century knight who wakes up in the modern world, and I made some notes about him, but beyond that I had no idea why he was back or what would happen to him in the present day. When the Crazy 8 guys told me about the ReDeus concept, I thought, “Aha! This explains everything.”

The first anthology had a very tight schedule, so I didn’t think I had the time to write a story that dealt with how Joubert adjusted to his new circumstances. Instead, “The Tale of the Nouveau Templar” took up his story in Manhattan several years after his return, after he’s settled in, learned English, and adjusted to the bizarre modern world of gods everywhere.

When I was invited to contribute to ReDeus: Beyond Borders, however, I had a bit more time, so I decided to go back to Joubert’s origin story. After all, it had been established in the first published story that he’d returned to life in Rome, and the second anthology, as its title indicates, would feature international settings. The tricky thing was that Joubert had had reason to talk a little about his return to life in “The Tale of the Nouveau Templar,” so in going back to his return I had to keep in mind that a lot of people would be reading his origin story after hearing about it briefly in the first story published. I was faced with the challenge of making the story work whether it was read in internal chronological order or in external publishing order.

The first thing I decided was that Joubert didn’t have a reason for telling the bishop in “The Tale of the Nouveau Templar” a completely accurate story. He was telling a bit of what happened to him to make a point, so he would feel free to condense and gloss a bit. So I felt I could expand and embellish upon the synopsis in the first story to keep the readers guessing a bit. I was able to “discover” some rather large twists.

It was fun to set a story in Rome, but it required a bit of research, just as it had to set the previous story in New York. I’ve never actually been to New York, so interweb stuff like Google Street View had been helpful that first time around. I have spent time in Rome, about a week or so—about three decades ago. Again, lots of internet research led me down specific streets, sometimes into areas I could remember being myself. And fans of the classic film Roman Holiday, starring Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn, will notice a particular scene. I couldn’t resist working in a location from the movie as a backdrop to a scene between Joubert and one of his interpreters, who also happens to be a woman he finds attractive, in a nervous, vow-of-chastity kind of way.

“A Medieval Knight in Vatican City,” therefore, is the whole, true story of Joubert’s return to life, a story of miracles and tragedies. I’m glad I got the chance to tell it.

ReDeus: Beyond Borders will be available in print and digital formats in late May.

A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE STORY…

By Lorraine Anderson 

This was not the story I had intended to write.

Most of the other authors are going to tell you how they noticed that the first book didn’t cover this God or that God or didn’t go to this country or that and they thought, well, they should explore that story.

Not me.  I wanted to start out with a joke.

“One Small Step” is the story of the friendship of a young girl, Mary, a devoted follower of the Goddess Dôn, and her neighbor, a resurrected king of Brittany named Conan, a Christian, and how they influence each other over the course of a decade, with lasting results.

“One Small Step” started out being a light-hearted story – a story of funny names and mistaken identity.  But as the story progressed, the characters took over.  The more I struggled to keep it light, the darker it became.  So I finally surrendered to the dark side, and my light-hearted attempt became a story of lost and found faith.

Conan was an actual king, credited with founding Brittany.  Very few accounts of him are known, at least according to that unimpeachable source Wikipedia.  Most of what I have Conan tell Mary was gleaned from these stories I found online, with a few spins of my own.  I wasn’t terribly concerned about keeping the history accurate; history is perception, no matter how accurate a source tries to be.

I did wonder how the children born during and after the coming would perceive the Gods.  After all, they had never known a world without the Gods walking the Earth.  What influence would the Gods have on these children?  How would the adults handle these children brought up in new faiths?  And how would the Christian church handle these “Gods”?

I also wondered about all of these people moving back to their ancestral lands.  What does this do to the world’s economy?  Would England or Germany (just to use two examples) end up like Japan, using every available space?  Would the culture change to reflect that?  I ended up only hinting at this.

I do want to thank the guys at Crazy 8 for letting me play in their sandbox, and I especially want to acknowledge Bob Greenberger for his invaluable gentle suggestions and help.  Many, many thanks!

ReDeus: Beyond Borders will be available in print and digital formats in late May.

By Lawrence M. Schoen

The exciting thing about working in a shared universe is the sharing. When I learned there was going to be a second ReDeus volume, and that I was being invited back, I knew I wanted to do two things: 1) continue developing the characters from my first story, “Coca Xocolātl,” and 2) grab one or more characters from one of the other stories in the first book.

“Singing for the Man” reunites us with retired language professor Matlal Alejandro Garcia y Fuentes. In the last story, at eighty-five years of age, Mat became a chess piece in a game being played by Huehuecoyotl, the Aztec trickster god known variously as “Old Drum” and “Old Coyote.”

Mat’s academic specialty was the indigenous languages of Mexico, which have all but been supplanted by Spanish since the previous reign of the gods, and Huehuecoyotl would like to bring them back. By the end of that story, Mat’s begun writing popular songs retelling in a modern voice the myths and legends of the Aztec gods. He’s been teamed up with a teenage pop star and her shape-changing bodyguard/composer and together they are not only stirring up interest in more than a dozen all but forgotten languages, but spreading the word of the Aztec pantheon throughout the newly drawn borders of Mexico and into the continental United States as well.

The new story picks up about a year later. Matlal and company have been on tour nonstop, and even though Mat’s been getting younger and younger, they could use a break. He convinces Huehuecoyotl they need a vacation, and when the god agrees, he says he wants to go to the Isle of Man!

I’ll spare you any spoilers for what happens when they get there, and instead tell you why I wanted them there. First, I was inspired by Phil Giunta’s brilliant story “There Be in Dreams No War.” Once I read that, I knew I wanted to steal (cough cough) I mean, borrow from it. Shared world, remember? I contacted Robert Greenberger to make sure that I wasn’t going to upset anyone with my plans and he told me clear any “borrowing” with the author of the original story first.

So I contacted Phil and told him that, if he didn’t mind, I would very much like to play with some of the characters from his story. Not only did he not mind, he gave me carte blanche to run wild and do anything I wanted! “Seriously?” I said. “Sure,” he said. Wow.

So, I had a destination. I had some “borrowed” characters. Now I just needed an excuse that would bring my characters into conflict with the borrowed characters. I needed a story.

I ended up with three.

I’m only going to tell you about one; sorry, you have to buy the book to learn the other two. Okay, okay, I’ll give you some hints. One storyline follows up on an idea from Aztec mythology, because, you know, those are my guys. Another storyline is a direct extension from Phil’s story, and gives a tip of the hat to Irish mythos. The third storyline though, that’s so strange that it’s not even fiction. It really happened.

On the Isle of Man they speak English. But they also speak Manx. Except… Manx officially went extinct back in 1974 when the last known native speaker, a fisherman named Ned Maddrell, died at the age of 96. The remarkable thing though was that the people on the Isle of Man (which has fewer than 85,000 souls to begin with) brought it back. They used it in signage and on radio. They taught it in classrooms. And in the years since it went extinct a small portion of the next generation grew up speaking the language as their mother tongue. Manx had native speakers again.

Twenty-one years after The Return in 2012, Manx is alive and well. And even though in our reality a native Nahuatl speaker like Matlal probably never set foot upon the Isle of Man, how could I not send him there and witness firsthand the very thing he’s trying to do with his own languages back home?

Of course, some gods, both Aztec and Irish, get in the way of things, but that’s all I can say about that.

ReDeus: Beyond Borders will be available in print and as a digital book in late May.

By Steven H, Wilson

In ReDeus: Divine Tales, I told how the Norse God Bragi came to mentor a desperate musician who was down and out as a result of the fall of YouTube. Axel Sage had hit it so big on the Web in 2012 that he was up for a role on The Voice, and his fame and fortune were assured. Then the gods returned, shut down the Internet for all intents and purposes, and Axel’s hopes were dashed until Bragi came into his life. Of course, Axel had to outsmart Loki before he could claim his place as Bragi’s pupil. Now he’s training as a real Norse bard.

This time, I chose to take my young rock star to Sweden, where Odin and the Aesir are assembling a new brotherhood of Vikings and a new sisterhood of Valkyries. The Aesir are probably the most techno-friendly of the gods, so they’ve embraced reality TV. Their new followers are recruited on the twin series Who Wants to Be a Viking? and Who Wants to Be a Valkyrie? Axel lands right in the thick of it, falling for a beautiful warrior maiden named Annika. Odin wants Axel, who’s enjoyed fame the world over for a decade, to get married, settle down and make his home with the Vikings. But Axel doesn’t believe in warfare, especially when it’s war waged as an amusement. He also can’t be sure his feelings for Annika are genuine, because Loki’s hovering around again. How does he know he’s not under some sort of spell? It all comes to a head when a young Viking challenges Axel to battle for the hand of the lovely Valkyrie who’s won his heart. Axel doesn’t mind being called a coward, and he’s willing to walk away, until he hears a prophecy which foretells his lady love could die if he doesn’t intervene.

This story touches on a lot of themes which are important to me: free will, peace, how our leaders (gods or mortal) play games with our lives, and how we often can’t even be sure of our own motives. ReDeus is a great stage on which to examine our relationships to each other, how much control we have over our own destinies, and what the implications of divinity are. The great thing about so many of the classical gods is that they’re not perfect. They can be petty, self-absorbed and manipulative, just like we can! They’re older and more powerful, which means they have their share of wisdom. They can be of great benefit to the humans they encounter. They can also overstep themselves and deprive us of the things that we, as humans, have come to value as the most important parts of our lives: self-determination, justice, and the opportunity to succeed on our own.

Axel is older in this story, and more grown up. In some ways, it’s a coming-of-age tale, even though he’s thirty or so, because Axel has to make a clear decision about what he’s going to do with his life. I’m especially excited because Bob, Aaron and Paul let me plant some seeds in this story which could grow a very interesting crop in future volumes. ReDeus: Beyond Borders is going to be a tour of the world of fantasy and myth with some very capable guides. I hope you’ll pick up a copy and let us show you around.

ReDeus: Beyond Borders will be available in print and digital formats when released in late May.