A Fistful of Warlocks (The Dresden Files, #00.1)

Some stories happen because a writer gets inspired by some wild idea that needs expression. Some stories are carefully put together as part of a greater whole.
And some stories you write because a professional friend asks you if you want to contribute to an anthology, and it sounds like a really fun idea. This is how the next tale was born—I needed a weird, weird West story so that I could contribute to Straight Outta Tombstone.
The upside of putting this project together is that the late-nineteenth century was largely a blank slate in the universe of the Dresden Files, so I was able to do whatever I wanted without being restricted by the 1.5 million words of story that had already been written. The downside was that the late-nineteenth century in the universe of the Dresden Files was largely a blank slate, so I had to start figuring out how to braid this story thread in particular into the greater story.
One of my go-to concepts when writing earlier eras of any story is to focus on characters who are the passionate young hotheads in any given setting—those are the people who generally provide me with the most interesting choices and stories. So, for this story, Anastasia Luccio fit the bill perfectly, and I’ve always loved the character and wished she could have more stage time. I worked out her early history as a young Warden and decided that she had been instrumental in the White Council’s decades-long war with, and victory over, the greatest necromancer of the previous millennium.
This is the start of what is now in my head a four-or five-book story all its own. I don’t know that I’ll ever get to write that tale of dark old Western supernatural horror, featuring Anastasia as the magical and gun-fighting protagonist, flanked by such figures as Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday of the Venatori Umbrorum, but it’s a hell of a good movie in my head.
So maybe imagine as you read this next piece that the movie begins here. …