A collection of newly rediscovered short stories by Terry Pratchett, originally written under a pseudonym, are to be published later this year.
The 20 tales in A Stroke of the Pen: The Lost Stories were written by Pratchett in the 1970s and 1980s for a regional newspaper, mostly under the pseudonym Patrick Kearns. They have never been previously attributed to Pratchett, who died in 2015 aged 66, eight years after being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.
The collection was bought by Pratchett’s longtime publisher Transworld for a six-figure sum, and will be published on 5 October.
The discovery of the stories is down to a group of Pratchett’s fans. One of the longer stories in the collection, The Quest for the Keys, had been framed on Pratchett fan Chris Lawrence’s wall for more than 40 years. When he alerted the Pratchett estate to its existence, the rest of the stories were unearthed by fans Pat and Jan Harkin, who went through decades’ worth of old newspapers to rediscover the lost treasures.
Lawrence said The Quest for the Keys had resonated with him when he was 15, and he collected each part of it. “I treasured and kept them safe for more than 35 years,” he added. “Having survived numerous house moves, little did I know of their importance.”
None of the stories are set in Pratchett’s Discworld – the first book of which, The Colour of Magic, was released in 1983 – but according to the publisher they “hint at the world Sir Terry would go on to create”.
Readers, said the publisher, could expect to “meet characters ranging from cavemen to gnomes, wizards to ghosts, and read about time-travel tourism, the haunting of council offices and a visitor from another planet”.
Rob Wilkins, Pratchett’s former assistant, friend and now head of the Pratchett literary estate, said the “rediscovery of these stories is nothing short of a miracle”.
“While Terry was always very focused on the next novel and maintained that his unpublished works should never be released, he always held a grudging admiration for his younger self’s work, and he would be tickled to see these stories celebrated in one wonderful volume,” he continues. “The stories from the beginning of his career, before he became the Terry Pratchett we know and love, are no less inspired and give real insight into the development of his creative genius.”
Wilkins crushed Pratchett’s hard drive with a steamroller after the author’s death, as per his wishes to not have anything unpublished released. So Wilkins did not know the short stories existed and was not expecting to read any other material by Pratchett.
The experience of reading the rediscovered stories, originally published in the Western Daily Press, was difficult to describe, said Wilkins. “They are all gems. Each and every one of them is fantastic because you know you get to the end of these and there are no more. We are not going to find any more, so every word you read you’re closer to getting to the end.”
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Wilkins said “young Terry was a great writer”, and the stories hint at the books and worlds he would come to write about. “They’re not just good, they’re better than good and they’re very, very, very Terry,” he said.
Pratchett’s estate manages everything from radio adaptations of his work to rereleases, but Wilkins says at its core, everything came down to “the written word”. “There is nothing more exciting than having them [the short stories] brought together in one volume so people can enjoy the stories for what they are,” he said.
Transworld managing director Larry Finlay said in the short stories Pratchett’s army of fans would “spot nascent characters and settings that were to define his long career as one of the most exciting and inventive writers there has ever been”.
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