Heroic Fantasy Quarterly Q29 Now Available
The editorial masterminds at Heroic Fantasy Quarterly have cracked open another rich vault of adventure fantasy tales, including stories by James Frederick William Rowe, Andrew Knighton, Cullen Groves — and Black Gate blogger Matthew Wuertz.
Here’s the editorial introduction to issue Q29 from the website:
Even as the summer heat beat us mercilessly, our will remains unbowed! We have ventured from the heat dome, through the wasteland, and we have again gathered the greatest tales of adventure to be found and brought them to you. Not only do we have a full cargo of stories and poems, we have a bonus story, AND we are leveling up to include story-specific artwork as well.
Heroic Fantasy Quarterly is one of the most reliable regular sources of new adventure fantasy. Here’s the complete fiction TOC, with fiction links.
“Lethe’s Cup and the White Sword,” Part One by Cullen Groves. We have waited for a truly great work of poetry, and that search has been rewarded! It is an epic so epical that we had to split it into two sections. Put your Iliads and your Táin Bó Cúailnges and your Lay of Leithians aside and take up Lethe’s Cup.
“Shadows in Sakamura,” by Matthew Wuertz. Magic and mayhem run amok in a mythic Japan. Cursed warriors Tsukiko and Katsu come upon a town beset by more than plague and bad luck. An excellent story, easily on par with Wuertz’ previous HFQ entry Aldrom from the misty days of HFQ #5.
“Racing the Headsman,” by Andrew Knighton. Maritime Monarchical Mayhem is the name of the game in this tale of Royalists and Loyalists and escapes and escapades on the high seas.
Bonus Story! Spatha Stercae, by HFQ editor James Frederick William Rowe. Giants and Romans and a veritable s***storm of a tale. What Rowe did for the ancient Celts in Lord of the Estuary back in issue 10, he does now for the early Romans.
As promised, this issue includes story-specific artwork for the first time.
HFQ welcomes back Vok Kostic with his piece “Hydra.” Mr. Kostic is a man of few words; a Serbian artist whose spectacular work can be found here.
Artwork for “Shadows in Sakamura” is by Skye Hembree, an art student from Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Artwork for “Spatha Stercae” is by Miguel Santos.
Poems this issue are:
The Persuaders, by Coleen Anderson. To turn the season you need a bit of the old magic.
Wench, by Scott Hutchison. You have to catch love where you can, even in the days of high adventure.
The issue also contains reports on the various Goings On with the staff
Heroic Fantasy Quarterly made a big splash last year with the arrival of the long-awaited anthology of their first few years, The Best Of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, Volume 1.
Heroic Fantasy Quarterly is an ezine dedicated to publishing short works of heroic fantasy. It is edited by Adrian Simmons, David Farney, William Ledbetter, and James Frederick William Rowe, and published four times a year in July, October, January, and April. Issues are posted to the website, and are completely free.
We last covered HFQ with Fletcher Vredenburgh’s report on issue #28 in his April Short Story Roundup.
See all the details on issue #29 here.
Our July Fantasy Magazine Rack is here. See all of our recent fantasy magazine coverage here.
Thanks for boosting the signal, John!
Issue #29 breaks a bit of new ground on a couple of fronts—“Lethe’s Cup and the White Sword”, for example, is probably not to everyone’s tastes, but for those few who like that kind of thing I think it will satisfy.
Story-specific artwork is a continuing experiment. We’ve had artwork before, usually provided by the author (such as “Crazy Snake and the Tribute for Pachacamac”- http://www.heroicfantasyquarterly.com/?p=1947 and Robert Zoltan’s “Blue Lamp” (about halfway down) http://www.heroicfantasyquarterly.com/?p=1889). We did our first attempt to facilitate writer/artist collaborations with Marlena Frank’s “Curse of Beauty” from issue #28 (about 1/3 of the way down) http://www.heroicfantasyquarterly.com/?p=1998).
So far the story-specific artwork has been worth it.
Thanks for boosting the signal, John!
Issue #29 breaks a bit of new ground on a couple of fronts—“Lethe’s Cup and the White Sword”, for example, is probably not to everyone’s tastes, but for those few who like that kind of thing I’m eager to hear what they think.
Story-specific artwork is a continuing experiment. We’ve had artwork before, usually provided by the author (such as “Crazy Snake and the Tribute for Pachacamac”- http://www.heroicfantasyquarterly.com/?p=1947 and Robert Zoltan’s “Blue Lamp” (about halfway down) http://www.heroicfantasyquarterly.com/?p=1889). We did our first attempt to facilitate writer/artist collaborations with Marlena Frank’s “Curse of Beauty” from issue #28 (about 1/3 of the way down) http://www.heroicfantasyquarterly.com/?p=1998).
So far the story-specific artwork has been worth it.
I’m thrilled to have a story in this issue! And the accompanying illustration by Skye Hembree is really amazing.
And I can’t say enough about the guidance and encouragement provided by the editors. Great team!