A New Advert Designed for Swords & Sorceries: Tales of Heroic Fantasy

This is the latest advert designed for Swords & Sorceries: Tales of Heroic Fantasy, in full colour above and in greyscale below. The artwork on all the covers is by award-winning artist Jim Pitts:

Lucilla - a novella is now also available as a Kindle eBook

Lucilla - a novella, serialised last year in Bewildering Stories, is now available as a kindle eBook as well as in hardcover.

The kindle version is £2.99 in the UK and $3.70 in the United States.

It was just another standard day at the Women’s Refuge until the arrival of Lucilla. Then Miranda’s world was never the same again.
Unaccountably influenced by what the girl needed, her job, her friendships, even freedom itself were of no importance. It was not until her niece’s life was at risk that Miranda knew she had to act.
But what could she do against someone who had such a tight, insidious grip on her?

amazon UK £13.99 in hardcover/£2.99 in kindle

amazon.com $17.85in hardcover/$3.70 in kindle

 

Swords & Sorceries: Tales of Heroic Fantasy Volume 6 reviewed in the latest issue of Phantasmagoria Magazine

Trevor Kennedy, editor and publisher of Phantasmagoria Magazine gives a great review of the 6th volume in our Swords & Sorceries: Tales of Heroic Fantasy anthology series. 

Many thanks to Trevor for giving us permission to quote his review in full:

NOW IN ITS sixth volume, editor and publisher David A. Riley and illustrator Jim Pitts’ “Swords & Sorceries” series of high fantasy anthologies returns with more of the sort of swash-buckling tales of epic heroes and dastardly villains, sorcerers, witches, gods and monsters that its fans have come to expect, some novella length, and penned by a team comprising of several of their regular contributors, alongside some newbies.
Proceedings get off to a very impressive start with Dev Agarwal’s ‘Land of the Dead’, an imaginative entry involving his recurring characters of the Stone Snake and Princess Irene being imprisoned as we join the adventure, and one which also features the haunting “Land . . .” of the title. This is followed by ‘The House of Bones’ by Carson Ray which sees his hero Knox out for vengeance against the delightfully monikered “Doctor Grimm”. Andrew Darlington’s ‘A Place of Ghosts’ is a superb story with a neat twist of an immortal being sent on a mission by a mage, while one of the S&S genre’s
finest sons, Adrian Cole, is featured in the series once more with his Atlantis-set ‘God of the Dreaming Isles’.

Other highlights would be ‘Wardark and the Siren Queen’ by Craig Herbertson, Tais Teng’s ‘Raiding the Graveyard of Lost Ships’, which is accompanied by a very nice illustration by the author, and ‘Golden Witch of Adzelgar’ by Scott McCloskey.
With no shortage of swords-for-hire, blood-soaked gore and battles, well thought out world-building, creatures of myth and legend, and other tropes aficionados of this particular brand of epic fantasy will surely enjoy, Riley and Pitts’ series continues to grow and give a platform to some of the best writers within this particular field, certainly contributing strongly to a resurgence of sorts within it at the same time.
I think it can be safely assumed that the Swords & Sorceries: Tales of Heroic Fantasy series is currently in a healthy position, with several more volumes in the planning stages, something that its regular readers will welcome with open arms, and swords and shields at the ready.
Swords & Sorceries: Tales of Heroic Fantasy Volume 6 is published by Parallel Universe Publications and is available to purchase from Amazon and other outlets. For more details please go to:
paralleluniversepublications.blogspot.com
—Trevor Kennedy

Phantasmagoria Magazine is available online from amazon and in certain selected shops, including some branches of Forbidden Planet. 270 pages of articles, interviews, reviews, fiction and loads of first-rate illustrations for a mere £13.99.

 

New advert for Swords & Sorceries: Tales of Heroic Fantasy Volumes 1-6

Prior to opening up submissions for Swords & Sorceries: Tales of Heroic Fantasy Volume 7 on the 1st October, here is the latest ad for the first six volumes.

 

If someone treats you badly

 

Lucilla - a novella is now available in hardcover

My novella Lucilla, serialised last year in Bewildering Stories, is now available in hardcover for £13.99/$17.85. The cover artwork is by Jim Pitts.

It was just another standard day at the Women’s Refuge until the arrival of Lucilla. Then Miranda’s world was never the same again.
Unaccountably influenced by what the girl needed, her job, her friendships, even freedom itself were of no importance. It was not until her niece’s life was at risk that Miranda knew she had to act.
But what could she do against someone who had such a tight, insidious grip on her?

amazon UK £13.99

amazon.com $17.85

Swan Song reprinted in Schlock! Webzine Volume 17 issue 13

I'd forgotten all about it but my story Swan Song, first published in the Black Books of Horror, has just been reprinted in the latest issue of Schlock! Webzine, Volume 17 issue 13.

AUTHOR INTERVIEW - STEVE DILKS

 

David A. Riley: Steve, you’ve been prominent in the swords and sorcery genre for some time now, not only as a writer but as editor and publisher with your own imprint Carnelian Press, through which you brought out two fanzines, The Hyborian Gazette and Twilight Echoes – Tales of Swords & Dark Magic. Which came first, the writing or the publishing, and can you give us a rundown on your career so far?

Steve Dilks: With the fanzines, I just wanted to get something up and running really. The whole REH community was getting pretty boring to me. I wanted to get out of the whole debate, argument and counter argument thing and put something creative out there. I saw a lot of talent lurking in the peripheries, and I wanted a place to express that; a place where I could shout; “Come and look at what these guys are doing!” A lot of great artists and writers ended up getting involved. On that front, The Hyborian Gazette was a real success. It attracted a lot of interest, but it was too much for me to keep up with the demand. I decided to stop doing it, mostly for my own sanity. I was printing it by hand in my bedsit and taking trips to the Post Office everyday but making zero money. Twilight Echoes was an off-shoot where I planned to showcase new talent in the sword & sorcery genre. The idea and execution were great, but it flopped. No one bought it and the whole s-&-s scene exploded a couple of years later anyway with much better realized products.

 

As for my own writing, that was already there. My first proper sale was in 2019 when Weirdbook published my SF story, ‘The Idols of Xan’. I’m currently wrapping up a novelette for Jason M Waltz’ swan-song anthology, Neither Beg Nor Yield, which should be out sometime early next year.

DAR: Which other writers have been the biggest influences on your own sword and sorcery stories?

SD: Ok, I’ll come clean. I’m influenced by all of them! Even the bad ones! Why not? Sometimes it’s just a mesh of everything and nothing. Even other genres!

DAR: Like many sword and sorcery writers your stories have a number of continuing characters, like Bohun of Damzullah. Do you think this is an important feature and something readers prefer?  

SD: For me, it’s a fun thing to do and those who like the Bohun stories enjoy reading them. There’s just something fun about the serial format, following a character on a journey through a pre-classical world, exploring strange cities and hostile landscapes.

DAR: What are your feelings about sword and sorcery novels? These are not common, and some people feel the genre is better suited to the short story and novelette formats. Robert E. Howard only completed one Conan novel. Do you think you would ever venture into attempting one yourself?

SD: I’m actually writing a short s-&-s novel at the moment. I’ve never quite got why people think they’re not common. There are literally hundreds. I could do you a top ten list of my favourites right now! The only reason sword & sorcery was written in shorter formats was because they initially started in the pulps which catered for the short-story market. But even then there were exceptions. A. Merritt’s The Ship of Ishtar, for instance, was published in 1924 and Poul Anderson’s The Broken Sword came out in 1954. There have been thousands of sword-&-sorcery novels since the ‘60s. Michael Moorcock wrote a fair few— The Eternal Champion, the Elric, Corum and Hawkmoon books. So did L. Sprague de Camp. Lin Carter did a series or two as did John Jakes and Gardner F. Fox. Then there were Karl Edward Wagner’s Kane novels, David C. Smith’s Oron, James Silke’s Death Dealer series…

DAR: Do you ever worry what constitutes a true sword and sorcery story or are you flexible in your attitude to the genre? Some people seem highly interested in laying down rules and lists of what’s needed to qualify as such. Does this bother you at all?

SD: Nope. If a story is well written it doesn’t need to worry about any of these things.

DAR: Print on demand and the increase in indie publishers has obviously had a big impact on the genre in recent years, with magazines like Savage Realms Monthly and the increased number of anthologies that seem to pop up with impressive frequency at the moment, as, of course, have online magazines such as Swords & Sorcery Monthly, not to mention eBooks – and, more recently, audio as well. Do you sometimes fear we could face an eventual glut of the market and that today’s apparent popularity might result in tomorrow’s boredom?

SD: Absolutely. It will happen, and go the same way the whole Cthulhu obsession did a few years ago. But as Lovecraft himself once wrote— ‘That is not dead which can eternal lie…’

DR: Where do you see the genre going next? Do you expect to see it shrink once more or, because of the proliferation of POD and indie presses, do you see it soldiering on? After all, without a reliance on the big publishers anymore, so long as there is a substantial enough core of fans out there to keep the genre alive, it will remain so. If so, who will be the next giants as such in the genre. In its golden age there were the likes of Robert E. Howard and Clark Ashton Smith, followed by Henry Kuttner, Fritz Leiber, C. L. Moore, Michael Moorcock and a handful of others.  Who do you see as today’s? Or is there instead a vast proliferation of names too numerous to mention?

SD:  So long as the stories are good and the writers, editors and publishers are true to their craft there will always be readers. Those that will make a name for themselves in the genre will be those that can also write beyond it. All the writers you just mentioned are known for other things. Believe it or not, Howard’s biggest success in his lifetime were his humuorous western stories featuring Breckenridge Elkins—which everyone should read by the way. Kuttner was a diverse hand who worked in SF, horror and fantasy. Leiber won the Hugo Award for The Big Time and wrote critically acclaimed horror like Conjure Wife and A Spectre is Haunting Texas. Moorcock edited New Worlds and wrote The Dancers at the End of Time, A Cure for Cancer and Gloriana. A genre is only as healthy as the stimulus behind it. 

 

For more information about books by or including stories by Steve Dilks use the following links:

Steve Dilks UK

Steve Dilks USA

 

 

 

For information and news across the swords and sorcery genre join the

Swords & Sorceries: Tales of Heroic Fantasy Group 

 

Author Interview: Eadwine Brown & Phil Emery re Neither Beg Nor Yield edited by Jason M Waltz

 

I have had the privilege of hosting a debate between two swords and sorcery writers appearing in Jason M Waltz’s forthcoming anthology Neither Beg Nor Yield: Eadwine Brown and Phil Emery, discussing what constitutes a genuine sword and sorcery story - something which is bound to continue for some time to come.

To access the pdf of this interview please click on the following link: Interview between Eadwine Brown and Phil Emery or alternatively OneDrive Access to the Interview

 

Savage Realms Monthly issue 19 with my story The Dark Priestdom reviewed

I was really pleased to read this review on a site I'm not familiar with, Harbinger of D.O.O.M. 

Of my story, the reviewer had this to say: 

"Next up is David A. Riley’s “The Dark Priestdom” and this one alone is worth the price of admission! It’s the longest of the three tales, running over an hour, but it’s captivating from beginning to end. It tells the tale of a storyteller who gets caught up in a con and winds up being accused of kidnapping a princess. He’ll have help from a Northman to rescue the princess, but the path will be fraught with peril."

To read the full review follow this LINK

 

Savage Realms Monthly with my story The Dark Priestdom now available on audio

You can now listen to Savage Realms Monthly No 19, which includes my novelette The Dark Priestdom on audio, narrated by the marvellous Robert Lovely, who genuinely adds an extra dimension to the tales he tells. 

Here is a link to it on amazon prime.

Lucilla - a novella

Sometime in the near future Parallel Universe Publications will be publishing my novella Lucilla, which was serialised last year in Bewildering Stories. 

It was just another standard day at the Women’s Refuge until the arrival of Lucilla. 

Then Miranda’s world was never the same again. 

Unaccountably influenced by what the girl needed, her job, her friendships, even freedom itself were of no importance. It was not until her niece’s life was at risk that Miranda knew she had to act. 

But what could she do against someone who had such a tight, insidious grip on her?

The cover artwork is by Jim Pitts. 

Pdfs of the book are available prior to publication for reviews.  

Please email paralleluniversepublications@gmx.co.uk for copies. 

 

Audio versions of Savage Realms Monthly

Issue 19

Ever innovative, Savage Realms Monthly has begun to turn their earlier issues into audiobooks. Yesterday I was given the opportunity by the highly talented Robert Lovely to listen to his version of my story The Dark Priestdom, which appeared in issue 19. Not yet available to the general public as an audiobook, I was massively impressed by how he brought my story to life - so well, in fact, it was as if I was listening to something written by someone else!

I definitely look forward to when issue 19 is available to buy.

In the meantime these are what are available so far: amazon audiobooks

Savage Realms Monthly for April 2023 reviewed in Schlock Webzine, including my story The Dark Priestdom

Schlock Webzine has just reviewed the April issue of Savage Realms Monthly, which included my story The Dark Priestdom. 

Follow this link to read the review online.