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\u00a9 Swords & Sorcery Magazine<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n A good place for a writer to go to for ideas \u2013 writers of all types of fiction, I\u2019d say, though especially historical fiction and also fantasy fiction, which I write under the penname of Rab Foster \u2013 is a museum.\u00a0 Last year my partner and I were on holiday in the city of Yogyakarta in Java, Indonesia. There, we visited the Sonobudoyo Museum<\/a>, which is devoted to Javanese history and culture.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Among its many exhibits, a couple of items in the transport section caught my attention and piqued my curiosity.\u00a0 These were palanquins, the conveyances the wealthy once employed to get around, which consisted of a chair, inside a box, with poles attached to it. The poles rested on the shoulders of servants or porters and their legs provided the palanquin and its rich passenger with locomotion.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n What, I thought, if I set a fantasy story almost entirely inside<\/em> a palanquin?\u00a0 How would that work?\u00a0 So I went off and thought about it, and made notes, and planned, and wrote, and the result a year-and-a-half later was a 7500-word short story entitled The<\/em> Palanquin<\/em>.\u00a0 I even managed to incorporate into it a striking detail I\u2019d seen on one of the Sonobudoyo Museum\u2019s biggest palanquins, a carved snake (or naga<\/em><\/a>) that adorned its roof.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n I\u2019m happy to say that editor Curtis Ellet has chosen The Palanquin<\/em> for inclusion in Issue 167 of his monthly webzine Swords & Sorcery Magazine<\/em> and that issue is now available to read.\u00a0 Being fantasy, the story is attributed to the aforementioned Rab Foster.\u00a0 For the next month, you can access the magazine\u2019s main page here<\/a> and The Palanquin<\/em> itself here<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n And that\u2019s it from me for 2025.\u00a0 Have a Happy New Year when it comes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a9 Swords & Sorcery Magazine A good place for a writer to go to for ideas \u2013 writers of all types of fiction, I\u2019d say, though especially historical fiction and also fantasy fiction, which I write under the penname of Rab Foster \u2013 is a museum.\u00a0 Last year my partner and I were … <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/bloodandporridge.co.uk\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Plnqn-1-300x169.jpg\")
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