X: “I am the Lord thy God”

Sometimes you hear about a project that’s just so damn juicy, so damn succulent, that it’sutterly irresistible. You find yourself watering at the mouth for it even before it starts. That’s how I felt when Kyell Gold from Sofawolf Press approached me about contributing a story to a little project he was cooking up, named X. He hadn’t yet fully fleshed out the team yet, so there wasn’t a guarantee that it would move forward, and it was naturally to be kept secret, but I utterly, utterly loved it.

A fiction anthology, a nice, thick paperback book, with ten saucy stories by different authors, each devoted to the theme of one of the Ten Commandments, with no restriction on genre, setting or mood other than that it should be good and sexy.

Fuck yeah, baby.

Oh, it was a pleasure to get back in the saddle. Heathen City is a fabulous challenge to write, considering how the story has to be compressed into a relatively small number of pages with criminally little space for dialog, so having the opportunity to really explore a scene and letting characters talk to each other for more than a few lines was an absolute joy.

Once the roster of authors was locked down (including ,  , , , Whyte Yoté and others) there was a respectful land rush to grab the most scintillating commandments, but I had my eagle eye on the one I wanted as soon as Kyell approached me.

“I am the Lord thy God” has always struck me as such an odd duck in the list, because while the others are all advice or admonishments, this one is a statement. Even with its amendment “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” it still rings so powerfully: this is the reality, and therefore here are some things you should and shouldn’t do.

I’m not officially affiliated with any one religion, but I’ve always had a fascination for the liturgy and mythology of the Abrahamic faiths, and I had myself a grand old time delving into some of the lesser-​​known aspects of Christian history, waxing prosaic on the philosophy of monotheism, the sincere worth and dangerous risk involved in such an abstract, total form of love as faith.

This book’s going to be a doozy. An official announcement from Sofawolf Press is still forthcoming, but we’ve been given permission to brag about it already. These are some fucking awesome stories by some stellar authors, with a gorgeous cover by   (who’s also doing the internal illustration for my story and one other) and additional interior art by . I’m looking forward to signing my name to this one!