Heroic Fantasy Quarterly–Q29

Even as the summer heat beat us mercilessly, our will remains unbowed! We have ventured from the heat dome, through the wasteland, and we have again gathered the greatest tales of adventure to be found and brought them to you. Not only do we have a full cargo of stories and poems, we have a bonus story, AND we are leveling up to include story-specific artwork as well.

 

Fiction Contents

Lethe’s Cup and the White Sword, Part One by Cullen Groves. We have waited for a truly great work of poetry, and that search has been rewarded! It is an epic so epical that we had to split it into two sections. Put your Iliads and your Táin Bó Cúailnges and your Lay of Leithians aside and take up Lethe’s Cup.

Shadows in Sakamura, by Matthew Wuertz. Magic and mayhem run amok in a mythic Japan. Cursed warriors Tsukiko and Katsu come upon a town beset by more than plague and bad luck. An excellent story, easily on par with Wuertz’ previous HFQ entry Aldrom from the misty days of HFQ #5.

Racing the Headsman, by Andrew Knighton. Maritime Monarchical Mayhem is the name of the game in this tale of Royalists and Loyalists and escapes and escapades on the high seas.

Bonus Story! Spatha Stercae, by HFQ editor James Frederick William Rowe. Giants and Romans and a veritable shitstorm of a tale. What Rowe did for the ancient Celts in Lord of the Estuary back in issue 10, he does now for the early Romans.

 

Poetry Contents

The Persuaders, by Coleen Anderson. To turn the season you need a bit of the old magic.

Wench, by Scott Hutchison. You have to catch love where you can, even in the days of high adventure.

 

Artwork

HFQ welcomes back Vok Kostic with his piece “Hydra”. Mr. Kostic is a man of few words; a Serbian artist whose spectacular work can be found here.

Artwork for “Shadows in Sakamura” is by Skye Hembree, an art student from Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Artwork for “Spatha Stercae” is by Miguel Santos.

 

Goings On

Heroic Fantasy Quarterly’s Best-Of Volume One continues to sell energetically, answering an unspoken need for adventure fiction. Are your needs being answered? Click on the cover at the right to get started!

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David Farney: Like Emperors Snoke and Palpatine before him, David Farney is manipulating from the shadows.

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Adrian Simmons: His story “Dilution Solution” is included in the Post-Old-Ones-Awakening anthology Apotheosis. His fantasy bronze-age story “How I Came to be Raised by Balniwan the Fool” is the lead story in the Summer issue of the Canadian SFF magazine Lackington’s. He’s had other recent fiction out at Outposts of Beyond and will have a story included in the No Sh!t There I Was anthology.

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William Ledbetter: His story “The Long Fall Up” is finally available in the May/June issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and his winning story from Writers of the Future, volume #28, “The Rings of Mars” is now available on audio at the StarShipSofa podcast.

Looking to the future, he’s sold his story “In a Wide Sky, Hidden” to Fantasy and Science Fiction. He’s also had a story accepted to the No Sh!t There I Was anthology, “Steal from the Sun”

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James Rowe: Between teachin’ philosophy and trying to get work done around the house, James hasn’t had too much to report. He continues to see regular publication in Songs of Eretz Poetry Review, with Skinshed, I Have Rid Myself of the Best of Me, Blue Mosque, and By Cherry Green Ensorcelled gracing the review’s pages. As a frequent contributor at Songs of Eretz, he’s also proud to invite all HFQ readers to consider entering the third annual Songs of Eretz Poetry Contest which begins September 1st. Information on this contest can be found here. .

Of course, you can also read his story Spatha Stercae in this issue of HFQ!

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Barbara Barrett: While at the Windy City Pulp Con in April, Barbara was invited to Doug Ellis’ home and with his permission took many photos of his extensive pulp art collection. These photos have appeared on Two Gun Raconteur website in a three part “An Amazing Collection of Pulp and Fantasy Art” written by Damon Sasser. Behold part one!

Her review of the 1979 BBC TV show “The Paranormal on British TV: The BBC’s ‘The Omega Factor’” appeared in Black Gate on June 23, 2016:

Her 2-3 part series “The Ships of Hy-Brasil”, which highlights the vessels Robert E. Howard uses in his poem “The Isle of Hy-Brasil”, will appear on Todd Vick’s  On an Underwood 5” website. The article includes descriptions of each type of ship mentioned, a picture of the ship, and a quotation from the poem.

 

SKELOS!

HFQ’s status as the go-to-place for sword and sorcery fiction is threatened by a new upstart venue.  Could this be the one spoken of in prophecy, the magazine that will bring balance back to the Force and prestige back to S&S?  With the likes of Mark Finn at the helm the odds are high.  We are so happy to find we are not the only ones poking around and looking for trouble.  Click on their cover at the right to get the scoop.

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Submissions Update!

We got a lot of good stories and poems over our last three submissions periods, allowing us to fill issues 29, 30, 31 and most of 32.  As a result, we  are going to close both our September and December submissions periods.  This will included both poetry and fiction.  Your editors need a break!  Some time in Lothlorian, or at least Rivendel… although we would settle for the classier parts of Zamora… anyway, we have several HFQ projects that we want to move to the front-burner(s).