The time George R.R. Martin rejected a Patrick Rothfuss story

Last week marked the release of The Narrow Road Between Desires, the first new book in Patrick Rothfuss’ Kingkiller Chronicle series in nearly a decade. The Narrow Road Between Desires is a reimagining of Rothfuss’ 2014 novella The Lightning Tree, and comes with more than 40 pieces of artwork by Nate Taylor, the same artist who illustrated The Slow Regard of Silent Things.

To mark the release of the book, we spoke with Rothfuss in an exclusive interview. We discussed a lot of things, including the fascinating history of this novella. You can watch the entire interview on the WinterIsComing YouTube channel, or read our 6 biggest takeaways from it if you’re pressed for time.

Or, you can keep on reading here for one of the funniest and most insightful things Rothfuss revealed during our chat: the time that George R.R. Martin turned down one of his stories, and how that ultimately helped Rothfuss in the long run.

George R.R. Martin once turned down a Patrick Rothfuss story

The original version of The Narrow Road Between Desires was a story called The Lightning Tree. It appeared in a 2014 anthology titled Rogues, edited A Song of Ice and Fire author George R.R. Martin and the legendary fantasy and science fiction editor Gardner Dozois. The story of how The Lightning Tree ended up in that anthology is a winding road.

Starting in 2009, long-time friends Martin and Dozois joined forces to create a series of anthologies. Each one had a specific theme — warriors, star-crossed love, etc — and featured impressive contributing authors like Neil Gaiman, Diana Gabaldon, Joe Abercrombie, Scott Lynch, Robin Hobb, Tad Williams, Jim Butcher, Gillian Flynn and far too many others to list them all out here. Rothfuss was invited to contribute to one of these anthologies (he didn’t specify which) but ultimately had to turn it down because he was still working on The Wise Man’s Fear at the time.

“I felt like a kid stuck practicing his violin when everyone else is outside, like catching frogs or I don’t know whatever kids do,” Rothfuss said. Despite passing on that first anthology invite, he was later invited to another one of Martin and Dozois’ projects: Rogues, an anthology all about thieves, con men, fast-talkers and the like. “And so then Rogues came around and I’m like Wise Man’s Fear is out. Now I get to hang out with the cool kids. This is my treat to myself.”

Rothfuss explained how he likes to do “the different thing,” bucking the traditional fantasy tropes. This led to him writing a story about Auri, the young girl who lives in the Underthing beneath the University where Kvothe studies magic in The Kingkiller Chronicle. However, the more he wrote, the more Rothfuss realized the story about Auri was…not quite right.

“This is a book where nothing happens and nobody talks and I don’t even know if it’s a book, and it’s certainly not a short story,” Rothfuss explained. “That eventually turned into [The Slow Regard of Silent Things]. And I wasted a lot of time on that. And again, it wasn’t wasted overall because I love Slow Regard, and a lot of people have told me it’s their favorite thing that I’ve done or it’s the first thing of mine that they read. It has a very special place in my heart…but I was supposed to be writing a short story, not an unpublishable novel length vignette-experimental-what-the-fuck.”

Eventually, Rothfuss set aside his story about Auri and started trying out different ideas for Rogues. After coming up against one brick wall after another, he realized that he might be able to repurpose part of a novel he was working on about Laniel Young-Again, a legendary figure in the Kingkiller Chronicle mythos, into a short story that would work for the anthology. This wasn’t ideal either, and it led to a firm but gentle rejection from Martin.

"Here’s the thing. At that point, I was torn between…I am horrible as a professional, because I know I already had a reputation of missing my deadlines and whatever. But also I know that a lot of people [were] really excited about my stuff and they wanted a story from me. And so [a tiny] part of me had the beginning of that terrible thing that ruins people where it’s like, “I bet I could just give them something out of this half-finished novel that I had to lay aside. They’ll just be happy because they’re getting a Pat Rothfuss story.” And so I took a chunk [that] had a bit of an arc out of the novel that I’d started to write and then again, I’d stopped to go work on, you know, the stuff I should do. And I sent it in and George was like…”You know, I don’t think this is the story, because it kind of doesn’t have like…a beginning, a middle, an end. It kind of doesn’t do what a story does. Kind of seems like kind of the beginning of a thing…that you got…but it’s not a thing by itself.”"

This left a big impression on Rothfuss. It reflected well on Martin’s work ethic, and also prevented Rothfuss from taking advantage of an easy out that he might have gone back to in the future had it worked. “I’m like, dude, he could have just said like, yeah sure. Because he doesn’t need to wait longer for another thing. He doesn’t want more work. But instead he’s like, I don’t think this is right for the anthology. And I don’t think it’s really the thing that we should put in the anthology, like it’s not a story. And I was like, okay, so I can’t pull that shit. And again, I was only thinking it [a little]. But if I had done that once, oh god, I might have tried to get away with it again and again.”

Following that conversation with Martin, Rothfuss went back to the drawing board and ultimately landed on doing a story about Bast, Kvothe’s Fae companion. Bast has an inherently roguish quality in The Kingkiller Chronicle, and is a character that was always “easy and fun” for Rothfuss to write. He pounded out The Lightning Tree (which was originally called Bast’s Day, “the worst title ever”) in only one month. And when he brought it back to Martin, it was the right fit for the anthology.

“George Martin really impressed me with the fact that like, he wasn’t going to take the easy way out,” Rothfuss said. “He was gonna actually call me on my bullshit and I really respected him for that and I still do. And as a result I got to do this story. I felt proud of it and then I moved on with my life.”

Fast forward to 2023, and The Lightning Tree has finally received the full book treatment so that it can sit nicely on shelves next to The Slow Regard of Silent Things. Had Martin not put his foot down on that initial submission, we may never have gotten the story of Bast and the young boy Rike told in The Narrow Road Between Desires.

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