About this Book
Bread Alone is a collection of four interconnected stories written about and around a place dubbed "the Bakery" by readers. Three stories, "Degrees of Separation," "Fortune's Favors," and "Block Party," are reprints–that means they've previously been published elsewhere.
There is also one new story, "Our Lady of Benevolence."
Also included are three "About..." essays, which tell you a little bit about how the stories came to be written.
Here, we're going to talk about how "Our Lady..." came to be written, and why this book exists.
As explained in "About Degrees of Separation," the very first Bakery story to be written– "Block Party"–came into being because Baen.com had commissioned a "holiday" story for their front page for December 2017. We fulfilled the commission, but that left us wanting to know more about the characters–all new to us. We then wrote "Degrees ..." to explain where they had come from.
A little while later, we were exploring another character new to us, a Luck called Mar Tyn eys'Ornstahl. Frequently, when we're attempting to understand, or "meet," a new character, we'll write a story about them. Pretty quickly, Mar Tyn was in bad trouble, and it was just–ahem–luck, that he stumbled into the Bakery.
In the course of "Fortune..." we "met" two other characters–Lady voz'Laathi, whose street name was Lady Benevolence–and Aazali, who was born a Healer in Low Port.
"Fortune's Favors" was written in 2019. Mar Tyn appeared in our novel Trader's Leap, in 2020, and we thought we were done with "the Bakery."
But, we were still wondering after Our Lady of Benevolence, and the little girl, sent away from her home to learn to be a Healer.
"Our Lady of Benevolence" is the story of those two characters.
You will note that the stories do not appear in the order in which they were written. We made the artistic decision to place the stories in internal chronological order–starting at the beginning and going straight through, to the end.
It's been an interesting exercise for us, and we hope an enjoyable read for you.
Will there be any more stories about "the Bakery"?
We'll all have to wait and see.
Sharon Lee and Steve Miller
Cat Farm and Confusion Factory, November 2021