Just The Axe, Ma'am #9
A Monthly Curated Newsletter of New and Notable Sword & Sorcery
BOOK 2 OF SARAH MACKLIN’S SWORD & SORCERY TRILOGY RELEASED
+ Sword & Soul was a term invented by Charles Saunders when he collaborated with Milton J. Davis on the Griots anthology series devoted to African-flavoured Sword & Sorcery. It was in the second book in the anthology series Griots 2: Sisters of the Spear, which featured Sarah Macklin's S&S debut with the story “Marked.”
Macklin went on to write similar fantasies with Bride of The River God and the story “Tears of Eb” that appeared in New Edge Sword & Sorcery #1.
Macklin's next big step was writing a full-fledged trilogy, starting with 2022’s The Royal Heretic and now, this month, releasing the second volume of Heretic’s War.
Macklin is one of the independent authors leading the way with her willingness to push towards an epic scale for Sword & Soul, while still being grounded in the politics and people of the ancient cultures that inspired it, and it is worth celebrating.
Both The Royal Heretic and Heretic’s War are currently available at MVMedia.
WHETSTONE EDITORS REVEAL NEW ‘KEEN BLADES’ IMPRINT
+ When Spiral Tower announced it was putting Whetstone magazine on hiatus for 2024, there was a bit of personal concern, as so much of the energy in the current small press Sword & Sorcery community comes from Whetstone’s ability to spotlight new and interesting voices within the scene.
We shouldn’t have worried.
Spiral Tower announced that it is launching a new imprint called Keen Blades, putting out for the first time print editions, in this case, novellas that push the boundaries of Sword & Sorcery.
They couldn't have chosen better than Matt Holder’s medieval phantasmagoria Hurled Headlong Flaming or The Bishop’s Tale.
”Matt has a real talent for evoking the medieval mind, and then having it come up against things that are totally alien to its experience. I'm really stoked for this.” - Adam McPhee from
The release date is set for May 1. In the meantime, you can enjoy the trailer they created for the book.
GOODMAN GAMES SELLS TALES FROM THE MAGICIAN’S SKULL MAGAZINE TO OUTLAND ENTERTAINMENT.
You can read the press release here.
+ Tales from the Magician’s Skull was founded in 2018 at Goodman Games by Howard Andrew Jones to be an original short fiction magazine devoted to modern original Sword & Sorcery, presented in a lavishly illustrated format reminiscent of old pulp magazines.
The magazine featured stories by veteran authors John C, Hocking, C. L Werner, and James Enge, and they were beginning to spotlight new rising voices in the genre, such as Jason Ray Carney and Matthew John.
The magazine also featured Nathan Long's all-new adventures of Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser and often featured covers by the legendary artist SanJulian, among others.
The magazine was ground zero for the renewal of interest in the genre that has blossomed into the current revival. Still, due to it being published by Goodman Games, it encountered challenges.
Distributors and Retailers often considered it a Gaming Supplement (while the magazine nodded in that direction with monsters from the stories featured as game stats on the final page, it was always primarily fiction).
As a result, while it was often found in game stores, it was not discovered as much by general SFF fans, and only devoted S&S aficionados sought it out.
Outland Entertainment previously published the Cullen Bunn-edited S&S anthology Swords in the Shadows in 2023 and has amassed a sizable back catalogue of general SFF and comic book-related work.
Hopefully, whatever direction they plan to take with the magazine, they will continue to keep it the flagship of the Sword & Sorcery Renaissance.
One will learn more about the magazine's future by following the new Kickstarter page Outland has set up.
IN OTHER NEWS…
+ On May 7, John R. Fultz will release a new book, the second self-contained novel set in the same Scaleborn setting as his novel Immaculate Scoundrels, released earlier this year.
You can pre-order it here.
+ Richard Pace revealed interior art for the upcoming Conan and The City of the Dead from Titan Books, written by John C. Hocking. The book collects his 1995 continuation novel Conan and the Emerald Lotus, which is long considered a highwater mark in the series by Robert E. Howard fans. An all-new sequel, Conan and the Living Plague is also included.
+ Jonathan Olfert has been slowly but surely building a bibliography of Sword & Sorcery-themed “paleofiction,” which once would have been called Spear & Fang after Robert E. Howard’s first published story in Weird Tales. He has sat down with the Meridian Australis for an interview.
+ Aaron Cummins, over at Spiral Tower, reviews The Doom of Odin, Scott Oden's third part of the Grimnir trilogy, calling it an “Iron-tinged Breath of Fresh Air.”
You can read the full review here.
COMICS & GRAPHIC NOVELS
+ While much of the current Sword & Soul originates in North America, the creators of Akogun: Brutalizer of the Gods sat down with AIPT to discuss being Nigerian creators who are drawing on Yoruba culture for their stories, the difference in hunters rather than warriors being heroes in the legends, and more.
Read the interview here.
FILM AND TV
+ With the announcement of the end of Star Trek: Lower Decks, people were wondering what the series creator Mike McMahan would do next, and now we know.
Golden Axe was a series of games originally known for appearing on the Sega Genesis in 1992. After decades of dormancy, Sega announced they would be reviving it with a new game, and now we have the announcement of the TV Series as well.
While Lower Decks worked as an affectionate love letter to Star Trek in all its forms, Golden Axe is more or less a stock of heroic fantasy tropes that can be used as props for comedy. One wonders if, beyond that, we will see a half-serious attempt to do more than that in the same way Lower Decks was halfway serious in its overall arcs.
PODCASTS ON PARADE
+ Ramsey Campbell was interviewed in the recent Monsters, Magic, and Madness podcast. He has confirmed he wrote what he presumes is the last Ryre the Swordsman story of Sword & Sorcery.
This is the character’s return for the first time in forty-five years since the character's four appearances in Andrew Offutt's Swords Against Darkness anthologies. It's for an upcoming "Mythos in Fantasy Lands" anthology that he didn't go into much more detail about.
Campbell’s Sword & Sorcery tales were unique in terms of Campbell’s unsettling style, so effective for modern contemporary horror authors Stephen King, and Grady Hendrix praised its ability to create a sense of unease in the reader to question the nature of reality.
It moved the four Ryre stores Campbell wrote into a truly horrific take on sword & sorcery, and the idea he is once more returning to give the character a last hurrah is exciting news.
+ Pondering The Orb from Jay Requard returns with a look at Sword and sorcery, both new and old. Jay gives readings from Poul Anderson’s novella “The Merman’s Children,” which first saw print in 1973 in the first volume of Lin Carter’s five-book anthology series Flashing Swords!, and also an excerpt from Howard Andrew Jones’ 2023 book Lord of a Shattered Land.
+ Michael Moorcock sat down with The Wandering DMs to discuss his works, the fantasy genre, and the time a friend decided to read Horatio Hornblower author C. S. Forester and instead ended up reading literary author E. M. Forster.
+ The Cromcast examined Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword, a seminal 1953 novel regarded as a major work of Sword & Sorcery and a notable work of pre-Tolkeinesque fantasy. It captures the blood, thunder, and grim fatalism of the Norse Sagas in ways that would cast a long shadow across the genre for decades.
You can listen to them discuss both the 1953 original and the 1971 revision by Anderson by going to listen to it here.
THIS MONTH IN SWORD & SORCERY MAGAZINES
Heroic Fantasy Quarterly:
Here is a gallery of more art from HFQ’s upcoming Best Of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly Volume 4 anthology. Editor Adrian Simmons has stated to Kickstarter backers that the hope is for a late May/early June release.
He announced they will be accepting submissions throughout July 2024.
Read about their pay rate and submission requirements here.
New Edge Sword & Sorcery: New Edge just had an open call for 7 works of 850 words of microfiction to appear in the next couple of issues! Good luck to all who submitted!
Old Moon Quarterly: Above is a sneak preview of the cover for OMQ #8 for later this year, done by Darko Stojanovic.
Swords and Sorcery Magazine: As you see above, editor/publisher Curtis Ellett gave the page a new look for issue #147!
As he notes in the opening editorial, “New Stories, New Site,” three new stories are up for your reading pleasure.
“The Cursed Wood” by Matthew Ilseman
”The Spectral Hunt” by Jared Kerr
”The Bequest” by Sandra Unerman
Tales from the Magician’s Skull: See above.
TRIAPA:
Spiral Tower Press, the people behind the Amateur Zines Way Station, Whetstone and Witch House, has established an 'Amateur Press Association,' TRIAPA, and its eighth mailing is now available.
If you want to submit a zine for TRIAPA #9, please send a 2-page zine (maximum) to spiraltowerpress@gmail.com. They invite and encourage all fans of sword and sorcery, cosmic horror, and space opera to submit.
Find out more and check out all eight previous editions here.
Whetstone: Amateur Sword & Sorcery magazine will be on hiatus until 2025.
The archive of all eight issues can be accessed here.
In the meantime, enjoy this cover art for their upcoming space opera magazine WayStation by Geraldo Marinho. I love how it looks like Phil Foglio characters wandered into a Basil Wolverton sci-fi comic.
SUBMISSION CALLS
The following markets are dedicated to or specified to accept Sword & Sorcery.
+ BFS Horizons, put out by The British Fantasy Society, is always open. 500 - 5000 Words. Remuneration £20. Submission Guidelines.
+ Heroic Fantasy Quarterly has announced they will accept submissions throughout July 2024.
Read about their pay rate and submission requirements here.
+ Hexagon SF Magazine specifies that it accepts Sword & Sorcery submissions, among other subgenres. It will open on May 1 - 7! The submission fee is 1 cent CAD per word. Check out their submission guidelines here.
+ Indie Bites, a non-profit fantasy anthology series put out by Silversun Books, is available on Kindle Unlimited and is looking for stories for its upcoming Forests & Familiars-themed issue. Deadline: June 30, 2024. Accepts up to 7500 Words. Honorarium £5. Submission Guidelines.
+ Swords & Sorcery is always open. Takes up to 10k words. Payment: $25 USD. Submission Guidelines.
That’s it for April! I hope you have a pleasant May. Please spread the word if you like this newsletter! —KB
Good stuff. Glad we found each other.