“All Under Heaven”

The ruins had stopped smoking days ago, but an unpleasant warmth lingered over the wreckage that had once been the temple of Honnō-ji. The two samurai carrying a lacquered tray and its covered burden stepped carefully as they made their way to the place where the inner gate had stood.

When the Tōhoku earthquake struck Japan in 2011, SF/F fandom organized one of its fundraiser auctions, and my offering was a story written to the Japanese history- or folklore-based prompt of the winner’s choice. The prompt I received was “Oda Nobunaga’s sacking of Enryaku-ji,” which is indeed a really interesting historical incident — one I was excited to write about!

. . . once I did the research I needed to know enough about the surrounding context.

. . . and that took, um. A while.

As in, I did not actually complete a rough draft of this story until 2022, just one day ahead of the eleventh anniversary of the earthquake. (Fortunately, the winner of the auction was also a friend, and was very understanding when I emailed him over a decade late.) A much more polished draft has now sold to Adventitious, and it’s due to be published in April!

(And, lest the above create confusion: yes, the prompt was the sacking of Enryaku-ji, and yet that first paragraph refers to Honnō-ji instead. Lots of temples were getting sacked in the Sengoku era, and the story wound up covering a broader swath of Nobunaga’s life than I originally expected.)