Heroic Fantasy Quarterly–Q59

The long gloomy days of winter getting you down?  Eager to get out and back to adventure?  Our offerings will lift your spirits and enflame your blood!  We’ve got three original stories and a fantastic poem.  Drag your chair to the fire and delve in!

 

Fiction Contents:

The Dreams From the Barrow, by Harry Piper.  Piper returns with a new tale.  A young boy’s easy idyllic life is upended by his discovery of an ancient barrow—or does the barrow discover him?  Piper brings you an adventure story worthy of the ancients!

Axandrjo the Silvernosed Vagabond, by C.D. Crabtree.  Axandrjo, disfigured prince and exile, has never given up on the idea of reclaiming the throne that was stolen from him or reuniting with the woman he loves.  Now the time has come to put his plans into motion!  A great tale from an exciting new writer.

The Iron Serpent, by H. R. Laurence.  On the run from the northern cities, things are going downhill rapidly for Heodric—he’s very likely to die at the blades of pirates; but Heodric has cunning and skill and may be down, but not out.   A story of derring-do and incredible escapes, this is a true sword and sorcery adventure!

 

Poetry Contents:

Doorways, by Jennifer Crow.  One more step and adventure awaits!

Ongoing Graphic Adventure Spear and Fang!

We’ve uploaded page 10 of Gary McClusky’s interpretation of Robert E. Howard’s first published story “Spear and Fang”.  We’ll be updating once a month until the tale is told!  Want early access?  Support us on Patreon and you’ll get it!

 

Artwork:

Wyverns!  One of the more classic monsters!   Things go badly for the poor riders in Jereme Peabody’s “Wyvern Hunt”.

Jereme is a software engineer in the DC area and is also a freelance concept artist working mostly on video games and books.  He started his artistic career dabbling with sculpting, pencils, and even still-life oil painting.  As tablets became available, he crossed over from traditional art to digital by first digitally painting still-lifes, then through experimentation and practice, transitioned to landscapes and fantasy.

 

Tales From Around the Fire

Like Frodo putting one foot in front of the other up the slope of Mount Doom, we have continued work on our fourth best-of anthology.  We are on the mountain, but not quite yet at the precipice.  Check out some of the artwork we’ve gathered for it:

 

HFQ Alum Howard Andrew Jones’ second book of his Hanuvar of Volanus, “The City of Marble and Blood” is out, to rave reviews!

Unfamiliar with Hanuvar?  Behold a review of book 2 here, and check him out in “A Stone’s Throw” from HFQ # 40.

Speaking of time constraints, with issue #58 and the best-of anthology taking up so much time we’ve had to kick back our online S&S writing workshop to an unspecified date in 2024.  It’ll happen when it happens!

I know you’re sick of hearing us talk about struggling against our time constraints, but one of the stories that slipped through our greedy fingers is “The Maiden’s Sleep”, by Micheal Stiehl.  We got the story, liked what we saw, but in breaking our own self-imposed two-month deadline it found another home at Word Castle Publishing and came out in mid-January.

Hold the phone!  John Futlz‘ new book “Immaculate Scoundrels” came out on March 5th.  Get it!

We don’t usually push sci-fi, but that was before HFQ ally Todd McAulty’s “Package Blue” hit the web.  After you get your fill of adventure in issue #59 give his tale a go.

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