Later this year, a collection of 20 short stories by the late fantasy author Sir Terry Pratchett that were recently rediscovery will be published.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Sir Terry wrote the articles for a local newspaper using the alias Patrick Kearns.
Although they had not previously been credited to him, they have now been gathered after a search by "a few devoted fans," according to publishers Penguin.
Sir Terry, the author of the bestselling Discworld books, passed away in 2015.
One of the longer tales in the new collection, The Quest for the Keys, had been framed and displayed on Chris Lawrence, a devoted Pratchett fan, wall for 40 years.
After contacting the Pratchett estate about it, Pat and Jan Harkin, two other fans, combed through decades' worth of old newspapers and discovered the others.
The Quest for the Keys spoke to him as a 15-year-old, so he made the effort to gather each piece, according to Mr. Lawrence.
"For over 35 years, I treasured and safeguarded them. I had no idea how important they were until I had survived several house moves. I only realized how important they were after speaking with [Pratchett's publisher] Colin Smythe. ".
According to Smythe, "For all the years I was Terry's publisher and then agent, he never once gave me any assistance in locating his shorter writings. However, as he wrote in his dedication to me in Dragons at Crumbling Castle, there were stories he had carefully hidden away.
"I had no idea how true these words actually were. ".
Over the course of his 44-year writing career, Sir Terry produced 70 books, which collectively sold more than 70 million copies in 37 different languages.
The newly discovered tales don't take place in the Discworld universe, but, according to Penguin, they "hint at the world Sir Terry would go on to create.".
In addition to learning about time travel tourism, the haunting of Council offices, and an extraterrestrial visitor, readers can anticipate encountering characters ranging from cavemen to gnomes, wizards to ghosts.
On October 5th, the stories will be released under the title A Stroke of the Pen: The Lost Stories.
But other unpublished Pratchett works won't be made public. According to the author's instructions, a steamroller was used in 2017 to destroy a hard drive that contained up to 10 unfinished novels.
