Cover by Sanjulian There’s been lots of buzz about the Tales From the Magician’s Skull Kickstarter here in the Black Gate offices. The first two issues — packed with sword & sorcery stories by James Enge, John C. Hocking, Chris Willrich, Howard Andrew Jones, C.L. Werner, James Stoddard, and Violette Malan — were a huge hit both with our staff and our readers. The brand new campaign to fund the third and fourth issues of the magazine wraps up this week,…
Recently Goodman Games announced a Kickstarter campaign to fund the launch of Tales From the Magician’s Skull, a magazine of all-new swords & sorcery fiction in the classic pulp style. The first issue is a delight for Black Gate readers, with tales from popular BG contributors James Enge, John C. Hocking, Howard Andrew Jones, Chris Willrich, Bill Ward, and others. And best of all, Goodman has invited Howard Andrew Jones on board as editor, guaranteeing a top-notch product. The spectacular success of the…
This is a man’s, man’s, man’s world — James Brown One blustery Maine spring day, I blew off class to spend an hour hanging out with a friend in the math department’s student lounge. Picture a Coke welded to my hand and a coffee to hers, as we discussed fantasy and science fiction and divers other subjects in the “wrong” lounge (we were English majors, but it was the English/Math Building and the math lounge was empty. What can I…
One of the most fun, unique aspects of Goodman Games’ Tales from the Magician’s Skull was the blending of Sword & Sorcery with Dungeon Crawl Classics statistics for the stories. That’s a wonderful recipe that has not been reproduced, despite many super-cool S&S periodicals being available (Dark Moon Quarterly, Battleborn, New Edge S&S, Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, Swords and Sorcery Magazine, Savage Realms, Swords & Sorceries: Tales of Heroic Fantasy, etc. plus loads of anthologies). Well, this Dark Muse News post…
Black Gate has covered the inception of Battleborn magazine as it spawned from an August 2025 crowdfunding on Indiegogo. Columnist and author Mark Rigney interviewed the champion and chief editor Sean CW Korsgaard over three segments: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. Too much ground to recap here, but we can highlight that the goal of the magazine is to blend contemporary Sword & Sorcery with reprints of classics (beyond Robert E. Howard, there will be Michael Shea, David Drake, and…
Having beaten back the kobolds (see Part One of this interview, here at Black Gate), Sean CW Korsgaard sat down again to talk Sword & Sorcery, and his editorial vision for Battleborn, his upcoming magazine. With your editor hat firmly on, what’s something you nearly always respond to positively? Heroic animal companions? A romantic sub-plot? A surfeit of halberds? Given Battleborn‘s approach to sword-and-sorcery, it should surprise nobody that memorable characters and authentic, hard-hitting action scenes are right above home…
Deep in the underground tunnels of Black Gate’s vast Indiana Annex, I sat down with Sean CW Korsgaard and we embarked on a lively chat about his upcoming S&S magazine, Battleborn – what it is, where it’s headed, and how S&S fits into our contemporary literary landscape. The Indiegogo to jump-start Battleborn closes on September 30th, so read on to see if you’d like to join in on the action. Why start a new Sword & Sorcery magazine in 2025?…
Battleborn is an upcoming action-packed sword and sorcery magazine curated by Sean CW Korsgaard and published by IronAge Media. Read this to learn the scope of this supercharged magazine, the crowdfunding campaign needed to make it a reality (Indiegogo Aug 1st!), and learn Black Gate Exclusive scoops! As an editor at Baen, Sean CW Korsgaard championed the Hanuvar series, and was mentored by the author, the late Howard Andrew Jones. Sean CW Korsgaard states that Battleborn is emulating Howard’s run on…
Left: The memorial booklet for Howard Andrew Jones given to attendees at the February 22nd Celebration of Life. Right: Sean CW Korsgaard gives his eulogy for Howard. Foreground: Christopher Rowe, Cinda Hocking, John C. Hocking. Photo by John O’Neill A Celebration of Life for Howard Andrew Jones (HAJ) was just held in Evansville, IN, Feb 22, 2025. The event gathered friends, family, and over a dozen author colleagues. Numerous online memorials and tributes had been posted leading up to this….
In 2019, I had an idea: a lot of my friends loved reading sword and sorcery fiction, but they didn’t write it. They would say, “One day.” Many of my undergraduates also expressed interest in writing fantasy, but they often felt discouraged by form rejection letters (genre magazine slush piles are epic). Having studied the history of genre fiction, I knew about the old tradition of “fanzines”— not-for-profit amateur publications that provided a low-stakes outlet for new writers. Just submitting…