Heroic Fantasy Quarterly–Q42

Well-met and welcome to Heroic Fantasy Quarterly Issue #42! The weather here has finally cooled down and HFQ turns up the heat with four stories and two poems and accompanying illustrations.  Without further delay, let’s get into it!

 

Fiction Contents

A Night in the Library, by Robert Zoltan, with artwork by Robert Zoltan. The adventures of Dareon Vin and Blue (from HFQ #26 The Blue Lamp) are back with a tale of sorcery, good love gone bad, and literary mayhem.

Echo of the Siren, by Richard Zwicker. We take a step back to Ancient Greece for this short, sharp piece.  You cannot look upon the gorgon and live, and you cannot listen to the siren and ever know peace.

We Who Are About to Die, by Michael W. Cho, with artwork by Robert Zoltan. From ancient Greece we move ahead to ancient Rome.  Life on the run from the entirety of Rome is no easy thing, and the game may be up for Chylon, ex-general and enemy number 1 of the empire.

Fellscorpe and the Wishing Well, by Katherine Quevedo, with artwork by Simon Walpole. A great irony of life is that it must be lived forward, but only can be understood looking back, and it is not every day that one really gets a chance to become a hero.

 

Poetry Contents

The Book of Ruins, by Jennifer Crow. Crow is back with another great poem.  Crumbling Ruins?  Yes, please!  Ruins, in every sense of the word, are a somber affair, and Crow delves deep into them.

The Cave of Glowing Skulls, by Gary Every, with artwork by Miguel Santos. Soccer is just a game these days, but once it was so much more.

 

Banner Art

Jereme Peabody returns with another great piece for us, “Wasteland”.   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.

 

Goings On

David Farney took time out of lording over two states to do mighty work on the best-of volume 3.

Adrian Simmons has seen the recent publication of his story “For I Have Felt a Fire in the Head” at Circova Magazine  (reviewed favorably at Tangent Online ) and he has continued to delve into the November, 1979 cadre of science fiction magazines at Black Gate . Adventure called and he answered with a 35-mile hike in the Ouachita Forest, and delved into pulse-pounding action competing in two taekwondo tournaments.

James Rowe and Arien Skiba have been toiling in the submissions mines to find you the great fiction and poetry you have come to expect!

 

Tales From Around the Fire

Heroic Fantasy Quarterly Best-of Volume 3 has been high on our mind, all our will was bent on it. While we did not get it hammered into shape before the World Fantasy Convention 2019, it is ready now.  Best-of III covers issues 17-24.  Re-live those glorious days!  With an introduction by Darrell Schweitzer, and illustrations for each story and poem.  Click on the ad at the right, or here and get your copy!

Robert Zoltan’s shadow looms large over this issue, with both a story, and a artwork, and the cover and artwork in Best-of 2, and his book The Long Long Long Long Rescue, Part I: Rescue An Epic Tale of the Incomparable Quill is out and you should need to behold it!

As many of you may know, while HFQ has a global reach, it is based in Oklahoma City. So imagiane our happy surprise when we realized another Oklahoman has hit the big time with a sword and sorcery trilogy!  Troy C. Bucher’s Lies of Descent is taking heads and turning names!

“The opening salvo in what promises to be a dramatic and inventive new fantasy series.” —Peter McLean, author of Priest of Bones

“Well-written and compelling, Troy Bucher’s Lies of Descent depicts how factual accuracy, military culture, and religion all conceal a long-standing historical deception about to implode into a conflagration fueled by the lust for power and fanned by mythic misconceptions.” —L. E. Modesitt, Jr., author of the Recluce novels

“Troy Carrol Bucher’s debut novel shows how much promise he offers to the literary world with an inspiring imagination of secrets only touched upon.” —Irish Film Critic

“Troy Carrol Bucher deftly twists all of your expectations into new and innovative directions.  Unpredictable; readers will not know what to expect from this epic fantasy as the lies that the world lives by begin to unravel.” —Joshua Palmatier, author of the Ley trilogy