Heroic Fantasy Quarterly–Q69

Heroic Fantasy Quarterly #69 is here to help you ease out of the burning heat of summer and into the smoldering heat of fall.  How will we accomplish this remarkable task?  Awesomely, as always!  We’ve got a Cimmerian-sized issue, with four works of fiction, three works of poetry,  and the next page of “Ancestors”.  We’ve got a ton of artwork coming in in, including the triumphant return of artist Simon Walpole, and all three of our audio performers (two of which are already uploaded).   Dive in!

 

Fiction Contents

The Chariot of Naram-Zahur, Dariel R. A. Quiogue.  Three fugitives from the city of Bel-Ezor risk travelling on the night of the eclipse of the two moons Zahur and Yashtar.  On such a night, the veil between worlds, between the present and the past, is stretched thin and dangers explode from every dune!  A fantastic tale of adventure, escapes, and intrigues.

A Voice of Hornets, by Bryan Babb, Sigurd the Norman has come to the seaside town of Safi to test his mettle against the demon troubling them.  But what lurks out in the depths is like no demon or creature he’s ever heard of.  He places his faith in the Lord and his own cunning, hoping that the creature is not doing the same.  Babb is bringing something new to the table!

Tinker’s Come to Fix Your Wares, by Galen Gower, the tinker—nobody’s fool—reads the signs before entering a new town, and forewarned and forearmed he ventures in, discovering a nearly empty city and within it a great mystery is unleashed.  With a full audio version!

Crossing the Eye of Silence, by Dennis Mombauer.  Trapped at sea in the Eye of Silence, Thekla and her companions must thread a dangerous path in both this world and the world of the past, and the inexplicable overalap between the two.  Weird fiction?  We got it!  “Crossing the Eye of Silence” takes place in the same world as Dennis’ tale “Thokmay”.  With a full audio version!

 

Poetry Contents

To Daze the Sea, by Daniel Kelly.  A warrior monk ventures down from the holy mountain on a quest to daze the sea, and damn…what a poem!

A King’s Lament, by Avriana Allen.  Being a prince with many brothers is a special kind of hell, one which must be plumbed to its depths if one is to ever escape.

Spilling Tea With a Housemaid of Wyvern Hall, by Gretchen Tessmer.  Servants often know more than their masters would ever guess.

 

Comic

We’ve got page 3 of Miguel Santos’ “Ancestors“!

 

Artwork

We’re switching up the banner art this time around, with Miguel Santos’ piece ‘Lookout behind you!’, the first of our ‘what happens next’ series from classic AD&D illustrations.

Have you ever wondered why that that elf looks so worried in Trampier’s ‘Giant Spider’ illustration?  Now you know!

You might think that HFQ #69 is all Miguel Santos all the time—but you’d be wrong!  We bring all the artists and all the voice work to this issue!

 

Goings On

David Farney:  David patiently works the mortar and pestle that grinds the components from which the dream-granting potion of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly is made.

Adrian Simmons:  The subplot added to his secret novel project mentioned in issue #68 has been crammed in.  All of the [insert the right thing here] bits have been inserted, and the final pass will be underway after issue #69 is uploaded.

All of that was only possible because he spent two glorious weeks at the Repeat Offenders writing retreat at the Ad Astra Institute at the University of Kansas.

Want to get time and space to work on your writing, want to get your head around the history of this beast we call speculative fiction? Ad Astra is there for you.

Just before he departed for that, he, Jason Waltz and Mark Finn pulled off the first S&S writing workshop at Robert E. Howard days in Cross Plains, Texas.  We had 12 participants and it was, by every measure, a success!   Looking forward to 2027!

 

 

Neil Baker:  Neil continues his journey into the barbarian realms at Black Gate:

A dive into the Deathstalker series

Get your Gor on!

Things get Troma-matic, and oddly foreign.

 

With the success of the REH writing workshop as a proof of concept, Jason Waltz has created his S&S editorial service “Whet Work”.  One of the hardest things about writing is that you have to be pretty good at it to get any feedback, but you can get an edge with Whet Work.

 

We round out this editorial wiht news about an upcoming release to keep your eyes out for.  If you’ve enjoyed Greg Mele’s ‘Azaltan’ tales at HFQ, then good news!  Mele’s putting together an anthology of his tales in “Heart of Vengeance”.  It collects fourteen tales (four never seen before), and fourteen illustrations.