Last October, Michael Harrington hosted an interview with Oliver Brackenbury on Black Gate; Brackenbury is the editor and champion of the New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine. That post coincided with the release of the teaser Issue #0 including short fiction & non-fiction (free in digital format, or priced at cost on Amazon Print-on-Demand, through the New Edge Website). And now we announce:

NEW EDGE SWORD & SORCERY launches

KICKSTARTER FOR ISSUES 1 & 2
Thirty-day crowdfunding campaign begins on Feb 2^nd, with issues shipping in Fall 2023

• • The legendary Michael Moorcock will have a brand new, original story featured in issue #1.
  • He joins twenty other fiction & non-fiction authors, such as Canadian horror master Gemma Files, Margaret Killjoy, David C. Smith, Hugo Award-winner Cora Buhlert, Milton Davis, and more. There will also be a tale by Jesús Montalvo, an author from the burgeoning S&S scene south of the US border, translated from its original Spanish.
  • Nineteen artists are spread across the two issues, including Morgan King, who directed Lucy Lawless in his 2021 rotoscope-animated Sword & Sorcery film The Spine of Night (featured on Black Gate in 2021). Samples of the various artists’ work are available on the Kickstarter campaign page, while also being shared across the magazine’s Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter accounts.
  • Each issue will feature seven original stories and four works of non-fiction: one book review, one essay, one in-depth interview, and one historical literary profile of figures like Charles Saunders or Cele Goldsmith. All stories, essays, and the profiles will be paired with at least one original B&W illustration.

“At least” one illustration, because the Kickstarter’s stretch goals are focused on three things – enhancing the book, beginning by doubling the number of illustrations, making the book more affordable outside North America by discounting international shipping, and paying contributors as much as possible. Starting at semi-pro rates, the majority of the stretch goals are alternating pay raises for authors & artists.

The magazine’s editor, Oliver Brackenbury, promises the magazine is “Made with love for the classics and an inclusive, boundary-pushing approach to storytelling”, delivering high-quality writing and art in a wide variety of styles. Sword & Sorcery can be many things and still be Sword & Sorcery.

If the Kickstarter succeeds, New Edge Sword & Sorcery will be:

• Released Fall of 2023.
• Available in digital, perfect bound softcover, and sewn-stitched hardcover formats. Interiors are printed on firm, 100gsm cream paper at a spacious 8½x11 inches.
• Stretch goals also include bookmark ribbons and foil embossing for the hardcover editions.
• Brackenbury has plans for publishing further issues, special themed issues, and eventually expanding into books, with a line of anthologies & novellas.
• First-day backers will receive an exclusive bookmark featuring original art which will never be shared or used anywhere else.

Help Champion the Kickstarter Campaign, open now through February 2023 (link)!

For more information visit www.newedgeswordandsorcery.com.

 

---

S.E. Lindberg is a Managing Editor at Black Gate, regularly reviewing books and interviewing authors on the topic of “Beauty & Art in Weird-Fantasy Fiction.” He is also the lead moderator of the Goodreads Sword & Sorcery Group and an intern for Tales from the Magician’s Skull magazine. As for crafting stories, he has contributed six entries across Perseid Press’s Heroes in Hell and Heroika series, has an entry in Weirdbook Annual #3: Zombies  He independently publishes novels under the banner Dyscrasia Fiction; short stories of Dyscrasia Fiction have appeared in Whetstone, Swords & Sorcery online magazine, Rogue In the House Podcast’s A Book of Blades, DMR’s Terra Incognita, and the 9th issue of Tales From the Magician’s Skull.