PS Publishing, 2015
Winner of the World Fantasy Award
There were twenty magical children born that year. Nineteen, if you don’t count the one that died. The Minister ordered that the nineteen children be shipped to the Tower to be worked and drained to nothing, and that the dead child be thrown on the rubbish heap, and never spoken of again. But the dead baby had other plans. When the half-drunk junk man witnesses the half-decayed corpse becoming a living, breathing, healthy baby, he knows at once that he must protect the child from the clutches of the Minister. Enlisting the help of the formidable egg woman and the sagacious constable, he manages to keep the existence of the child a secret. But children grow. And so does magic. And secrets long to be told.
Kelly says…
This is another book I wrote by accident — or rather, I wrote it while avoiding yet another uncomfortable conversation about politics with my libertarian in-laws, during a Thanksgiving trip to their house in Florida, long ago.
Some stories require months or years of thinking and planning and re-working and re-thinking, and some stories just emerge, fully formed. This was the latter. I started in the middle and worked outward — something I never do. I knew the shape of it, the way the pieces would layer together, the mood and texture of the language. And I knew it would be a novella.
“This story,” I told myself when I was only about eight pages in, “will be 30k words, I just know it.” And I almost stopped right there — after all, what does a person even do with a novella? But it was too late — and the conversation upstairs was too insufferable — so I spent the long weekend writing the story, and finished it on the plane ride home. And then I put it in a drawer for a long time.
Years later, in a discussion with the fine editors at PS Publishing, they asked me, “You don’t have any interest in publishing a novella with us, do you?”
As a matter of fact, I did! They did a beautiful job.
Reviews:
“Barnhill compels the reader to smile through the heartbreak, cheer for bold heroism and defiance, and celebrate victories which come with a heavy cost. The Unlicensed Magician is a delight and a treasure.”
— Joe Sherry, Nerds of a Feather