I knew I would be in financial dire straits from the outset. As a freelance writer and web designer, I do not have health insurance. As such, my cancer would be treated and I would receive the best in care, but that would also leave me destitute: I would likely have to declare medical bankruptcy, which would result in the fiscal ruination of the following decade. I had to do something.
After I had settled into my treatment schedule, I had lunch with New York Times best-selling author Terry Brooks. I have worked with Terry for fourteen years, as his webmaster and continuity editor, his friend and confidante. I asked if he’d be interested in donating a short story, the proceeds from which would go against my mounting debt.
He agreed. And added, “Why don’t you contact your other writer friends?”
Time is precious to writers; words are precious to their publishers. I decided to take the risk, be vulnerable, and ask those writers a question I had no business asking. I could damage working relationships; worse, I could ruin friendships.
I had to take that risk. And when my friends selflessly began donating short stories for what would become this anthology, tears of gratitude began to replace the fear I carried. Some of the best authors in the fantasy genre rallied around me. They bolstered me during my time of hardship. In turn, I refused to dictate what their story contributions should be. I would not chain these writers with a theme or any word-count restrictions—I wanted this to be theirs as much as it was “mine.”
Instead, they would be unfettered, free to write exactly what they wanted to donate.
And, in turn, I would become unfettered from medical debt.
Unfettered is an anthology filled with magic, wonderment, and hope. It is more than its combined stories, though. It is the power of friendship. Of giving. Of a science-fiction and fantasy community that protects its own. Of humanity escaping the ugliness that often plagues it to instead create a testament to the goodness found in every heart.
I am forever indebted to these writers as I am forever indebted to you readers.
As long as I am able, I will pay forward that debt.
I hope you enjoy Unfettered.
Shawn Speakman
Editor and Publisher
May 2013
Full disclaimer, right off the bat: I wrote this story back in early 1990 when Del Rey Books came to me for a piece to be included in a coffee-table book of modern fairy tales. Other contributors included Anne McCaffrey, Isaac Asimov, Lester del Rey, and half a dozen more. Since Lester was my editor and Judy-Lynn my champion, of course I agreed to contribute.
The collection was titled Once Upon a Time, and when it was published in 1991, “Imaginary Friends” was included.
So the story is neither brand-new nor unpublished. Of course, it has been out of print for quite a while, so at least it will seem new.
The idea for the story was already in my head when I was approached. For some time, I had been thinking of breaking away from the Shannara and Magic Kingdom series to write something new. I wanted to do a big, sprawling saga—another, obviously—but one that was situated in the present and in which the schematic of magic was so integral to what we know to be true about our world that it would feel entirely plausible. That meant the fantasy elements and magic devices I chose to employ had to have explanations that made them feel real to the reader.
I had envisioned this saga as a trilogy of books, all of them linked by a series of common elements, but never as a short story. However, since no one was clamoring for such an opus, I thought this would be a good chance to put something down on paper as a sort of rough blueprint of what I would one day have a chance to write in larger form.
So I wrote about Jack and his impish friend Pick and the owl Daniel and their lives together in Sinnissippi Park. Most of what I wrote in the shorter version was changed entirely in the longer. Yet I think you will find that the story stands up pretty well on its own merits.
Several years later, I would write the books that comprise the Word & Void series, but “Imaginary Friends” was the prototype. Read on, and you can discover a little about how the one led to the other.
— Terry Brooks
IMAGINARY FRIENDS
Terry Brooks
Jack McCall was ten days shy of his thirteenth birthday when he decided that he was dying. He had been having headaches for about six months without telling anyone, the headaches being accompanied by a partial loss of vision that lasted anywhere from ten to twenty minutes. He hadn’t thought much about it since it only happened once in a while, believing that it was simply the result of eyestrain. After all, there was a lot of homework assigned in the seventh grade.