Sir Terry Pratchett fans may have feared that there would be no ‘new’ work for readers after he died in 2015.
However, an eagle-eyed fan has discovered 20 works written by the beloved author under a pseudonym. This work is now set to be published as the final collection from the Good Omen’s author.
Pratchett died aged 66 in 2015 after an astonishing career where he wrote over 70 books and sold over 100 million copies. The 41-book Discworld series was arguably his masterpiece, but readers will still be eager to get their hands on this previously undiscovered work.
His estate has continued to publish his work posthumously, with the final book in the Discworld series and a short story both being published after his death. However, the ‘new’ short stories which the estate is set to publish in October, will be released under the title ‘A Stroke of the Pen: The Lost Stories’ and may not have ever reached his audience if it wasn’t
They were penned by Pratchett under the name Patrick Kearns during the 1970s and 80s for a regional paper. They were uncovered with the help of super-fan Chris Lawrence, who spotted similarities between Pratchett’s work and a story under Kearns’ name, so contacted the author’s publicist Colin Smythe.
EuroNew reported Smythe’s reaction. He said: “For all the years I was Terry’s publisher and then agent, he never ever gave me any help in finding his shorter writings – but as he wrote in his dedication to me in ‘Dragons at Crumbling Castle’, there were stories he had “carefully hidden away and very deliberately forgot all about.” Just how true these words were, I had no idea.
Although these short stories will be published, other work that could have been available to Pratchett’s fans will not be. The author ordered a hard drive with 10 incomplete novels to be crushed by a steamroller in his will.
