Heroic Fantasy Quarterly–Q37

HFQ 37 Editorial

Welcome back to Heroic Fantasy Quarterly! Summer is in full swing here in our part of the world, and we bring the heat to you! We hit hard with three stories, three poems, a bonus story, and bonus artwork and audio!

 

Fiction Contents

Paladin of Golata, by P. Djeli Clark. The plains of Golata are the site of battles between gods and demons, and the fanatical followers of those gods and demons. But people gotta make a living and there is all that sweet fanatical gear out there, so for those foolish and daring enough to risk the horrors the rewards can be great. But young Teffe finds more than he bargained for among the dead and dying.   Djeli is a two-time HFQ alum with stories in issues #7 and 23.  With Artwork by Skye Hembree.

 

Forest of Bone, by Christopher Chupik. The Roman empire is a fading memory and a roaming knight of the new High King of the Brittons delves into the darkest part of a dark age. Foul sorcery and the thunder of giants echo through Chupik’s outstanding tale!

 

The Blitz of Din Barham, by Cameron Johnston. You want dragons? You want sorcerers? You want sorcerous in-fighting? Oh, you get it, in abundance! Din Barham is besieged by dragons, and the squabbling sorcerers are barely able to keep them at bay. Desperate times call for desperate measures and young Kyna, apprentice to the great Magus of Din Barham, has to break ranks and find a solution.

 

Bonus story! What Clev Yun Would Want to Tell. HFQ editor Adrian Simmons busts out a short tale from the early days of the bronze-age world of Bronze-Ard and the Ferret-Master . A poor prisoner of war explores the power of myth and how a people define themselves. With artwork by Simon Walpole.

 

Poetry Contents

Threads of Gold, by Adele Gardner. Ariadne steps out of the shadow of Theseus and Dionysis to become the centerpiece of this excellent poem. With an audio version by the author.

When the Legions Went, by David Barber. One man’s oppressor is another’s protector, and as the order fades, brigands follow the retrating tide for any fame and booty they can find.

The Necromancer, by Ngo Binh Anh Khoa. People often think that necromancers have a hold over the dead; sometimes the dead have a hold over the necromancer. With audio by Karen Bovenmyer.

 

Artwork

Jereme Peabody finishes off his series of interconnected banners for us, which began with Issue #34’s “Journey’s Beginning”, Issue 35’s “Giant Attack” Issue 36’s “At the Summit”, and now wrapping up with “Gateway”. From atop the mountain you find another mountain, indeed!

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.

Skye Hembree returns with an illustration for “Paladin of Golata”. She’s had illustrations with us before in for “Between Sea and Flame” “Lethe’s Cup and the White Sword” and “Shadows in Sakamura”.

Simon Walpole returns with artwork for “What Clev Yun Would Want to Tell”. Simon is a freelance illustrator who works primarily in pencil, pen and watercolours and whose work can be seen at his website Hand-drawn Heroes.   Simon also has multiple works in our Best-of Volume 2, “Crazy Snake and the Demons of Ometepe” from issue #34, and “The Lady and the Dwarf” in issue #36..

 

Goings On

David Farney keeps his chin up and holds the line.

Adrian Simmons: Adrian finished up his quatro-decadal-review of the sf/f magazines of November 1969 at Black Gate with a review the November 1969 Venture, and an overall accounting of that tumultuous year. He also helped form the Black Gate Book Club and hashed out his complicated feelings about C.J. Cherry’s Downbelow Station .

His story “The Wait is Longer Than You Thin” was the May story at Giganotosaurus.

Adrian spent two glorious weeks at the Kansas University Summer of Sci-Fi and cannot recommend their writing workshops/classes/and retreats enough.

James Rowe:   James’ summer has thus far been spent busily writing academic papers with a hope to see those in scholarly journals sooner rather than later. On the more creative side, his two poems “Fury of a Language Isolate” and “Taboo” are slated to appear in NILVX: a Book of Magic – A Journal of Magic(k), mysticism, and the occult in their Fall, 2018 “Words of Power” issue. He is also set to give a talk entitled The Doors of Platonic Perception: (Neo-)Platonism, William Blake, and the Vision of the Infinite through Morbid Anatomy on September 25th in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York. Lastly, stay tuned for James’ new philosophy youtube channel which should make its debut later this month, and which shall, of course, contain at least a few words on some sword swinging barbarians, for what is philosophy if it cannot answer the Riddle of Steel?

Tales From Around the Fire!

 

After we dipped our toes into the crowdfunding waters with the Kickstarter for HFQ Best-of Volume 2, we considered doing another for general funding of the grand endeavor that is Heroic Fantasy Quarterly.

After a lot of debate and discussion we’ve decided to jump on the crowd-funding train with our own Patreon campaign. We’ve had a ton of fun running HFQ and are impressed with what we’ve been able to do on our shoestring budget. But we are eager to break ground on new projects, and to do that we need to secure more stable funding, and to do that we are turning to you. Like what we do? Want to see more of it? Back us!

It is a golden age for S&S and adventure fiction fans! The HFQ best-of Volume 2 is still selling strong and easily available from Amazon.

We are happy to give HFQ alum Joshua Hampton (The Lay of Cuthred King, Lament for the Fathers  and The Northman’s Daughter ad space for his book Mad Love, Murder and Mayhem—Favorite English and Sottish Ballads.  He collects 35 of those Child ballads that have become most widely known around the world. The 220-page volume features a plot summary, brief history, and list of selected recordings for each ballad