Browsed by
Author: SELindberg

S.E. Lindberg resides near Cincinnati, Ohio working as a microscopist, employing scientific and artistic skills to understand the manufacturing of products analogous to medieval paints. Two decades of practicing chemistry, combined with a passion for the Sword & Sorcery genre, spurs him to write graphic adventure fictionalizing the alchemical humors (primarily under the banner “Dyscrasia Fiction”). With Perseid Press, he writes weird tales infused with history and alchemy (Heroika: Dragon Eaters, Pirates in Hell, Lovers in Hell). S.E. Lindberg co-moderates a Goodreads group focused on Sword & Sorcery.
Dark Muse News: New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine, Issues #8, 9, & 10

Dark Muse News: New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine, Issues #8, 9, & 10

Comments 0 Comment
Cover Artists Cover #8 – Jimmy Makepeace  Cover #9 – Plastiboo  Cover #10 – Matej Kollár

Black Gate has been tracking the inception and growth of New Edge Sword & Sorcery (NESS) mgazine, starting with Micheal Harrington’s 2022 interview with Oliver Brackenbury (champion and editor of NESS), through 2023 with NESS’s first two magazine releases (also Greg Mele’s review of #1), and then into 2024 with NESS’s first book “Beating Heart and Battle Axes and its two-novella combo book Double-Edged Sword & Sorcery, and then in 2025 we covered NESS‘s publication of a NEW Jirel of Joiry tale! (2025) and we interviewed one of their key New Edge authors, Bryn Hammond.

Now in 2026, NESS brings us more with promises of Issues 8, 9, and 10!

The campaign to fund and expand them ends just days after this posting (March 14th )!  Hurry now to Backerkit to get some exclusives like a poster featuring live models in full S&S costume, discounted back issues, and a cover art postcard; also, backing unlocks more interior art and bumps author payments. If you miss out, or want some of the prior rewards from previous crowdfunding, get back issues and other NESS offerings in their shop, noting that print copies often have limited print runs.

So what is in the next three issues? We asked Oliver Brackenbury that, and his answer is below. And we had a feeling Jirel of Joiry would return, and we asked Molly Tanzer to provide a bit of perspective on the heroine.

…

Read More Read More

Dark Muse News: Sword & Sorcery Chain Story (#14-#18)

Dark Muse News: Sword & Sorcery Chain Story (#14-#18)

Comments 0 Comment

In August 2025, we hailed the emergence of a second Chain Story project championed by Michael A. Stackpole. This is a Sword & Sorcery-focused, contagious set of connected (“chained”) stories. Each is:

  • A standalone tale
  • Readable in any order
  • Free to read
  • Interconnected via a theme involving a Crown

Stories are being released every few weeks. We’ll round up groups, but check the Chain Story website. for the latest. In this post we highlight the latest set of five, Episodes 14-18:

…

Read More Read More

Dark Muse News: Reviewing Conan – Spawn of the Serpent God by Tim Waggoner

Dark Muse News: Reviewing Conan – Spawn of the Serpent God by Tim Waggoner

Comments 6 comments


Conan: Spawn of the Serpent God by Tim Waggoner (Titan Books, October 28, 2025). Cover artist unknown

Titan Books is on a roll, publishing Conan novels in quick succession: S. M. Stirling’s Blood of the Serpent (2022), John C. Hocking’s City of the Dead (2024), James Lovegrove’s Cult of the Obsidian Moon (2024), Tim Lebbon’s Songs of the Slain (2025), and Tim Waggoner’s Spawn of the Serpent God (2025).  And their 2026 schedule promises more with John Langan’s The Brides of Crom.

Here we delve into Tim Waggoner’s Spawn of the Serpent God. He’s a Bram Stoker Award-winning author known for horror and media tie-in fiction. Recently, he was honored for his Terrifier #2: The Official Movie Novelization with a Scribe Award for Best Adapted Novel from the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers. With approval from movie writer and director Damien Leone, Waggoner had doubled the size of the hack-and-slash script by adding lore and characterization (I plan to interview Tim Waggoner about this for Black Gate‘s Beauty in Weird/Horror series). Anyway, Waggoner’s knack for tie-ins and deepening characters is demonstrated again in Conan: Spawn of the Serpent as he highlights the dangers of Zamora.

…

Read More Read More

Dark Muse News: Anna Smith Spark’s A Sword of Bronze and Ashes

Dark Muse News: Anna Smith Spark’s A Sword of Bronze and Ashes

Comments 2 comments
A Sword of Bronze and Ashes, September 12, 2023, FLAME TREE PRESS (Cover illustration by Broci)

Welcome to more Dark Muse News. This post reviews Anna Smith Spark’s A Sword of Bronze and Ashes. It was released in September 2023 (Flame Tree Press, cover illustration by Broci) and is the first book of the series The Making of This World: Ruined. The sequel, A Sword of Gold and Ruin, was recently published in October, 2025.

Anna Smith Spark is known as the Queen of Grimdark, a moniker she acquired with her Empires of Dust series. You can expect the same poetic brutality here.  Her style and approach are very unique but are reminiscent of Tanith Lee. Literary wording may keep you distanced as a reader, but the raw emotion expressed throughout is so real that it makes the fantasy feel real, too.  We interviewed Anna Smith Spark in 2019 – Disgust and Desire as part of our Beauty in Weird Fiction series, where she revealed all sorts of muses and inspirations. That year, we hosted a Q&A Session at Gen Con; there, she, John O’Neill, and I showed off our footwear (link); Anna’s footwear won hands down!
…

Read More Read More

Dark Muse News: Affirmations and Exploits of a 50+ Year Old Miniature Gamer

Dark Muse News: Affirmations and Exploits of a 50+ Year Old Miniature Gamer

Comments 4 comments
Warhammer Quest: Dark Water

For this round of Dark Muse News, we’ll be seeking affirmations.

I’m older than the typical kid who plays with toy-soldier figurines (well, I’m over 50) and love to play with plastic figurines. If you are like me, and need affirmations on occasion that it is okay to be a kid still (and perhaps even okay to spend a load of hobby money on boutique board games), then this post is for you.  We’ll highlight H.G. Wells, Peter Cushing, and delve into preparing for Warhammer Quest: Darkwater. This confesses my obsession with miniature board games that include miniatures; my collection includes shelves of asylum horror crawlers [yes, it’s a whole subgenre, and this blog will cover them] and traditional dungeon crawlers. The post overviews the evolution of some dungeon crawlers.

…

Read More Read More

Dark Muse News: Saluting Goth Chick and Interviewing Waclaw Traier of War Claw Games

Dark Muse News: Saluting Goth Chick and Interviewing Waclaw Traier of War Claw Games

Comments 2 comments

Happy New year!

This emerging blog salutes Sue Granquist, who contributed every Thursday championing Goth Chick News in this very time slot. Sue Granquist contributed 741 articles over 16 years here on Black Gate with a special focus on horror movies and conventions (the longest-running column in Black Gate history). Sadly, she passed away in November 2025. John O’Neill penned a moving tribute: Goth Chick, January 13, 1966 – November 18, 2025. The outpouring of comments there is a testament to her influence.

In short, 2025 was a sad year for Black Gate champions, marked also by the passing of Howard Andrew Jones last January and Rodger Turner in June. I imagine them bolstering Black Gate (especially John O’Neill) from beyond, as force ghosts and role models. Peace to those who fell before us.

Going forward, as a tribute to Sue’s moniker “Goth Chick News” and the need to report on dark fantasy, I’ll be bringing you “Dark Muse News.”

…

Read More Read More

Doom Pilgrim! – War Claw’s Solo Card-Game-Book

Doom Pilgrim! – War Claw’s Solo Card-Game-Book

Comments 0 Comment

Narrative game books steered my interest into dark fantasy reading and playing. The 1980s phenomenon of Fighting Fantasy gamebooks championed blending RPG elements into the choose-your-own-adventure genre. Although these persist in 2025 (in releases, digital versions, several tabletop games… all susceptible to reviews here soon), the last decade has enabled new forms of narrative, choose-your-own-adventure solo games.

This post highlights DOOM PILGRIM, a narrative-card-game-book by War Claw Games. The company is based in the Czech Republic. Most of their lineup has Print-to-Play options in addition to physical copies (produced by US-based manufacturer, The Game Crafter).

Released in 2022 as a physical and print-and-play game, Doom Pilgrim was awarded “Best Small Game of the Year” from the solo-dungeon-crawler guru Daniel from  Dungeon Dive (see also his his Doom Pilgrim tutorial).  In short, it is a superbly elegant, beautiful game. Doom Pilgrim has several expansions available now, with more on the way. Also, these proven game mechanics have evolved into Arthurian Legend,  Sci-Fi, and weird horror games.

…

Read More Read More

The Chain Story 2 – Sword and Sorcery – Episodes 9-13

The Chain Story 2 – Sword and Sorcery – Episodes 9-13

Comments 2 comments

This August, we hailed the emergence of a second Chain Story project championed by Michael A. Stackpole. This is a Sword & Sorcery-focused, contagious set of connected (“chained”) stories. Each is….

  • A standalone tale
  • Readable in any order
  • Free to read
  • Interconnected via a theme involving a Crown

Stories will be released every few weeks, so check the Chain Story website. We have guides to Episodes 1-3 and Episodes 4-8, and this post introduces Episodes 9-13!

…

Read More Read More

The Chain Story 2 – Sword and Sorcery – Episodes 4-8

The Chain Story 2 – Sword and Sorcery – Episodes 4-8

Comments 4 comments

August 3rd, we highlighted the first three stories of The Chain Story 2 – Sword and Sorcery. All these stand-alone stories are “chained” together with a common element (a common magical artifact represented in the logo), with different contributors showcasing their own characters/worlds. They can be read in any order, for free (at least for several months, many times indefinitely)!

Stories will be released every few weeks, so check the Chain Story website continuously!  This post highlights the next five!

…

Read More Read More

Clark Ashton Smith Conference – A Rendezvous in Smith’s hometown, Auburn, California

Clark Ashton Smith Conference – A Rendezvous in Smith’s hometown, Auburn, California

Comments 0 Comment

For many enthusiasts of pulp fiction, there is a rite of passage in which the reader stumbles into H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, or Clark Ashton Smith, and as they track down stories or read adjacent publications, they learn about the others and they were pen pals and shared numerous cross-over characters/ideas.  People usually discover Howard or Lovecraft first, and are often floored last by the poetic, cosmic madness of Smith. Clark Ashton Smith (1893-1961) was a poet at heart, also a sculptor and artist, and his approach to weird fiction was to introduce lyricism and literary depth. Indeed, he is a major reason I started interviewing authors on their take on “Beauty in Weird Fiction” in 2014, the series hosted by Black Gate since 2018. Check out the Eldritch Dark website for his fiction, nonfiction, and images of his drawings and sculptures.

He could not tell the duration of the weaving, the term of his enthrallment.  Dimly, at last, he beheld the thinning of the luminous threads, the retraction of the trembling arabesques.  The globe, a thing of evil beauty, alive and aware in some holocryptic fashion, had risen now from the empty armor of Yanur.  Diminishing to its former size, and putting off its colors of blood and opal, it hung for a little while above the chasm…

– From “Weaver in the Vault”, a Zothique tale, CAS (1934)

So, it is with great pleasure that we spotlight a conference dedicated to Clark Ashton Smith, duly hosted in the author’s hometown (Auburn, CA, to be held Jan 10th, 2026)! Read this to find out all the details, the amazing panelists, and get an inside perspective from the organizer about the origin of the event.

…

Read More Read More