Heroic Fantasy Quarterly-Q67
Happy February! After being trapped in our lair due to incredibly cold and snowy weather, we have emerged to find a world gone quite mad. We’re here to anchor your sanity and give you respite with tales of adventure! What we bring you in issue #67 is four stories, two excellent poems and artwork.
Fiction Contents
The Dying of the Light in Darkness, by Dennis Conrad. Ah, we long for adventure, but when we get it… a great grim start to the issue.
Melkart and the Monkey Men, by Mark Mellon. A hunting journey goes south for Melkart of Assyria when he finds himself set upon on all sides by bandits of all sizes.
Erase the Slate, by Jonathan Olfert. Swordsmen and sorcerers and thieves are easy enough to spin stories around, but what of the final of the classic quartet? Priests as main characters tend to get short shrift in the S&S world. Tithe-Takers Carmora and Edevadd will balance the scales on all accounts.
The Palimpsest of Memory, by Deborah L. Davitt. We bring three of the classic quartet back with spells and swordplay. Brother Thomas, already taught many hard lessons by life, learns the difference between truly erasing and merely covering up.
Poetry Contents
The Half-Orc’s True Identity , by Christian Emecheta. Half-Orcs. Love ‘em or hate ‘em they are always compelling!
An Ocean and a Tide, Intertwined, by Joel Glover. Sorcerers venturing into the 5th world confront many unique dangers in this unique poem!
Spear and Fang
We are happy to reveal the last two pages of Gary McClusky’s take on Robert Howard’s first published story “Spear and Fang”. Head over to the comic page to get them!
Artwork
Jereme Peabody presents this issues banner art “The Battle of Lions”. Sometimes we give Jereme an idea and sometimes he comes up with it himself—in this case he came up with an image that came from an idea:
In this image, I imagine lions thinning out a village. Loved ones are hunted and disappear, never to be seen again. To stop this, they must defeat the Alpha. This image is about standing up against tyranny. It’s about standing up for who and what you love, even if it ends you. Survival, no matter how small you are. But the hunter is smart. The sun behind the hunter is significant because it makes it harder for the lion to see him. It makes the fight tactical and even. That spear looks so thin that it would be precise and deadly. His leap is calculated, well practiced, and final. This moment defines the ending in the story.
Goings On
2026 Robert E. Howard Days Writing Workshop. The powerhouse of Adrian Simmons (Heroic Fantasy Quarterly), Mark Finn (Skelos), and Jason Waltz (Rogue Blades) will be running a Sword and Sorcery writing workshop at REH Days in Cross Plains TX, Thursday June 11. The party is still getting equiped, so keep an eye on our Workshop Page for the final details.
HFQ Submissions open in March. We got three and a half issues put together from our last submissions window, but the well is running dry, so we’ll be open for submissions in March, 2026.
The Marching Order
David Farney: David has been keeping the network of message ravens going!
Adrian Simmons: Adrian continues work on his Secret Novel Project. He’s maybe 75% done with the first draft. He’ll be at FenCon in Dallas on the weekend of February 20th. He (sloooowly) continues his quatro-decadal reviews with the November 1999 Analog and Asimov’s.
Some unexpected adventure came his way when, like a knight of yore, he had a horse shot out from under him but came out unscathed.
Neil Baker: Neil runs rings around Adrian with his own series of essays and reviews at Black Gate. He talks about his top 30 favorite movies, part 1, part 2, part 3 and part 4! Want more? Want Star Wars more?
Eric de Roulet has a recent essay about imperialism and dictatorship as portrayed in Science-Fiction/Fantasy come out in Speculative Insight.
If you like Jereme’s African inspired artwork, check out Steve Dilks’
Egypt was still a dream in the eye of Ra, the sun-god, when Bohun of Damzullah battled his way across a forgotten empire than spanned half the world…
Need more? Check out HFQ Alum Milton Davis’ Eda Blessed III
For ten years Omari Ket has roamed Ki Khanga, stumbling from mayhem to misadventure under the watchful eye of Eda. A task for the mysterious Kamites has made him a wealthy man, and Omari now has only one desire; to return to Sati-Baa and live the life he’s dreamed since he was street savvy orphan.
We want to direct your attention to S&S powerhouse Joe Bonadonna and the first book of his Dorgo the Dowser series, Mad Shadows.
From infernal depths where lost souls are resurrected as hell-spawned devils; where creatures from the other side of the veil separating the earthly from the unearthly are conjured into existence; where beings from an ancient land whose borders cross into other dimensions slip through to our world … the adventures of Dorgo the Dowser pit him against sentient shadows, duplicitous women, unscrupulous men, a criminal underworld of humans and semi-humans, malevolent puppets, strange beasts that time forgot, and beings from another world—not to mention zombies, killer fauns, vengeful vampires, raging werewolves, and the most unique pair of jewels you’ve ever heard of.
Lastly, if you want to support us in a more direct way, join our Patreon where you’ll get sneak peeks at artwork and audio.
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