HEROIC FANTASY QUARTERLY– Q19

With awesome terminology like Polar Vortex cramping our minds, we find ourselves this first day of February trapped between winter storms Leon and Maximus. Yeah, we’re sick of it too. So it is that our thoughts turn to warmer days and climes. While we can’t do anything but wait it out here in the northern hemisphere, we at HFQ can do what we do best: provide you with a sunny shot of 100-proof escapism.

And when we say sunny, we mean it – welcome to Heroic Fantasy Quarterly Issue 19, the desert issue!  You can almost feel the hot sand beneath your feet as you read tales of lost cities, deadly treks, towering ziggurats, djinn, and the intrigues of princes and sorcerers!  Now pack up the caravan and move ‘em out!

Fiction Contents

House of Nharat, by Garnett Elliott
We take it back old school Sumerian for this one.  Anticipating astounding astrological adventure?  Always able!

The Last First Time, by Colin Heintze
The fortunes of an incense merchant rise and fall, as does the lost city of Karkil and the love of the doomed maiden therein.

The Living Curse, by Ethan Fode
Cannibalistic cultists. Runes. The stink of sorcery on a hero infected by same, his reluctant use of it a necessary evil when Soren destroys a temple and escapes into the desert only to be taken in by a tribe with human sacrifice in the offing.

Paradise of Wasteland, by Adrian Simmons
A special extra tale to get 2014 off to a solid start!  When you want the weapons of legend to turn the tide of war, where are you going to go?  A mythical city in the desert, that’s where!  How do you get there?   Sorcery, that’s how!  How much would you give for those weapons?  A lot more than you think!

Poetry Contents

The Succubus, by Colin Heintze
This is only the second time we’ve had an author with both a short story and a poem in the same issue – read this and we think you’ll agree it’s a feat needing no explanation!

Fortune-Teller, by E. L. Schmitt
We’ve seen the future and it includes you reading and digging this poem as much as we did!

Artwork
Going hand in hand with our all-desert stories, we’re delighted to display freelance Polish artist Piotr Gajda’s “Desert Port City” as the art for HFQ 19. He keeps his biography simple, liking to draw landscapes in the fantasy genre.  More of his outstanding artwork can be found at http://ravirr17.deviantart.com/.

Goings On

Heroic Fantasy Quarterly added a new editor to the cabal — James Rowe.  Familiar to HFQ readers as the FIRST writer to have both a poem and a story in an issue of HFQ (“Everywhere the Serpent Slain” and “The Worship of the Lord of the Estuary”), he brings his expertise to the editorial side of things.  Welcome aboard!

William Ledbetter has a non-fiction article “The Exoplanet Hunters” out now at the Baen.com site.

He has a short story called “Meat 2.0” that will be in the next issue of Stupefying Stories.

His hard SF story “Stealing Arturo” will be published on the Baen.com website in the spring of 2014.

Adrian Simmons has a story coming out in the winter 2014 edition of James Gunn’s Ad Astra magazine.  “Support Staff”, a tip of the hat to some of the classic Bradbury-sque sci-fi of yore, with a modern twist.   He will also be nosing around Con DFW in Dallas on the weekend of February 21^st.

Issue 19 also has a change in the advertising.  We’ve got Jeanette Cheney’s  short story “The Eretik”.  Curious as to her ability? Refresh yourself with “The Nature of Demons” in issue 17.

Also mixing up the lineup is fellow S&S venture Rogue Blades Entertainment’s newest book “Sword Sisters”.   Jason Waltz, the force behind RBE, knows good stuff when he sees it, as well as when he writes it.

And last but not least we’re happy to report that Dariel Quioge, whose tale LORD OF THE BRASS HOST appeared in HFQ Issue 7, has compiled more short stories involving Orhan Timur and his adventures in an ancient East that never was. You can check out Swords of the Four Winds by following this link to Amazon.

Enjoy issue 19 and we’ll be back for issue 20!