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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.
More Tales From The Magician’s Skull Live on Kickstarter!

More Tales From The Magician’s Skull Live on Kickstarter!

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“More Tales From The Magician’s Skull Kickstarter” Is Live

Now through Nov 19th, 2021, you can amplify the success of the Tales from the Magician’s Skull (TftMS) magazine by participating in the Kickstarter campaign brought to you by Goodman Games. The campaign is on fire in its early days and rapidly earned a “Projects We Love” badge from Kickstarter.

The initial 2017 Kickstarter (Black Gate release link) kicked off the first two issues, and a follow-up campaign in 2019 carried us to issue #6. Throughout this journey, Black Gate has chronicled reviews for most issues: TftMS#3, TftMS#4, TftMS#5, TftMS#6. A key post is John O’Neill’s epic interview with Joseph Goodman (publisher) and Howard Andrew Jones (chief editor). This interview captures the origins of the Skull from its two primary champions (who appear possessed by the undead celebrity).

Current readers already know that the magazine magically blends (a) homages to pulp magazines with superior paper quality & inked illustrations with (b) contemporary masters in storytelling. The result? We get officially licensed pastiche of Leiber’s Fafrhd and the Gray Mouser/Lankhmar (Nathan Long’s contribution to #6) and Elak of Atlantis tales from Adrian Cole (issues #4 and #5); and we get fresh perspectives on Sword & Sorcery from John C. Hocking, Clint Werner, Violette Malan, James Enge, and others. And there is more! RPG players rejoice since each issue provides stats for playing with the characters, items, and spells featured in each story.

Read On! The Secrets to Pledging Are Revealed

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Fun, Fresh Fantasy: Mad Shadows: The Heroes of Echo Gate by Joe Bonadonna

Fun, Fresh Fantasy: Mad Shadows: The Heroes of Echo Gate by Joe Bonadonna

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Mad Shadows III: The Heroes of Echo Gate (Pulp Hero Press, February 2021). Cover artist uncredited

Joe Bonadonna’s third installment of his Mad Shadows, Dorgo the Dowser series, The Heroes of Echo Gate, was announced this Feb 2021 at Black Gate. We covered Dorgo’s world and Bonadonnoa’s cinematic narrative, which we’ll touch upon again during this review. Also on Black Gate, the author of the internationally acclaimed IX Series, Andrew Paul Weston, reviewed all three books of the Mad Shadow series. This post reinforces those articles and highlights this fresh fantasy adventure’s (a) Epic Scope, (b) Cinematic Style, and (c) Faith theme.

The Heroes of Echo Gate is fun, fresh fantasy. Dorgo and his fellowship of Harryhausen-like creatures defend a magical portal from a horde of demons. Epic!

As the cover implies, we have our beloved weird-fiction investigator & mercenary Dorgo (the guy front and center on the cover with the dowsing rod and sword) defending the titular portal with a band of friends (most of whom could have stared in a Ray Harryhausen movie. For the young readers take note that Harryhausen was the “Frank Frazetta” of cinema who gave life to the fantastical creatures before computer graphics were invented). There are three acts that follow the classic purposes: setup, rising tension, and an epic battle. The climax consumes a full third of the book and resonates with all the grandeur of defending Tolkien’s Helm’s Deep. The city of Soolaflan, on the island of Thavarar, is the fortress and it is situated around Echo Gate. Demons from across time want access to it. The portals across the world of Tanyime (and even across time and space) echo those from C. J. Cherryh’s Morgaine Cycle and even Raymond E. Feist’s Riftwar Saga.

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Weirdbook Annual #3: Zombies: Available now!

Weirdbook Annual #3: Zombies: Available now!

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Cover by Fotolia

Wildside Press, ‎ 295 pages. ISBN 978-1479463312

(US Amazon prices: $3.99 Kindle/ $15.00 Paperback/  $29.99 Hardcover)

Zombies! Available now for your Halloween needs!

In 2015, Douglas Draa resurrected Weirdbook with issue #31 (the weird fiction magazine had been dormant since 1997). Fast forward to 2021, and issue #44 is now available. In addition to the core issues, there are themed anthologies spawning. Annual #1 Witches came out in 2017; and Annual #2: Cthulhu appeared in 2019 (discussed on Black Gate).

This year, for Annual #3, Weirdbook challenged authors to come up with memorable takes on zombies. The result is this fantastic collection of 34 new stories. Draa looked for tales that were fun, entertaining and scary. He also wanted fresh meat (i.e., he didn’t want to serve up a bunch of Romeroesque, plague zombies).
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Tales From the Magician’s Skull #6: Available Now; and Skull TV Announces a Kickstarter

Tales From the Magician’s Skull #6: Available Now; and Skull TV Announces a Kickstarter

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Doug Kovacs cover art

Published by Goodman-Games. Paperback, PDF, eBook (80pages). ISBN 9781950783816.

Announcing the availability and contents of the Tales From the Magician’s Skull #6, a magazine of all-new swords & sorcery fiction! Issue #6 features cover art by Doug Kovacs of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.

Yes, mortal dogs, you read that correctly. The Skull brings readers a new series of stories set in Fritz Leiber’s Lankhmar! Licensed by Leiber’s estate, the forthcoming stories and novellas faithfully expand upon the legendary tales of Lankhmar’s most famous duo.

Issue #6 is available at the publisher’s website Goodman-Games, in Paperback, eBook, and PDF (PDF’s are also available on DriveThru RPG). In the future, expect the paperback of issue#6 available from Amazon, like many of the previous issues.

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Sublime, Cruel Beauty: An Interview with Jason Ray Carney

Sublime, Cruel Beauty: An Interview with Jason Ray Carney

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Jason Ray Carney (aka Ayolo)

Art & Beauty in Weird/Fantasy Fiction

It is not intuitive to seek beauty in art deemed grotesque/weird, but most authors who produce horror/fantasy actually are usually (a) serious about their craft, and (b) driven by strange muses. To help reveal divine mysteries passed through artists, this interview series engages contemporary authors on the theme of “Art & Beauty in Weird/Fantasy Fiction.” Recent guests on Black Gate have included Darrell Schweitzer, Sebastian Jones, Charles Gramlich, Anna Smith Spark, & Carol Berg. See the full list of interviews at the end of this post.

This one features Jason Ray Carney who is rapidly becoming everpresent across Weird Fiction and Sword & Sorcery communities (in fact you can probably corner him in the Whetstone S&S Tavern (hosted on Discord)). By day, he is a Lecturer in Popular Literature at Christopher Newport University. He is the author of the academic book, Weird Tales of Modernity (McFarland), and the fantasy anthology, Rakefire and Other Stories (Pulp Hero Press, reviewed on Black Gate). He recently edited Savage Scrolls: Thrilling Tales of Sword and Sorcery for Pulp Hero Press and is an editor at The Dark Man: Journal of Robert E. Howard and Pulp Studies, for Whetstone: Amateur Magazine of Sword and Sorcery and for Witch House Magazine: Amateur Magazine of Cosmic Horror. Incidentally, Jason Ray Carney has also contributed here at Black Gate with a post on Robert E. Howard’s Bran Mak Morn character and musings on How Sword & Sorcery Brings Us Life.

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C. Dean Andersson Tribute Interview and Tour Guide of Hel: Bloodsong and Freedom!

C. Dean Andersson Tribute Interview and Tour Guide of Hel: Bloodsong and Freedom!

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…And on the day two hundred
There it stood white to the sky
The house of the God of the cross
Big enough to take two dragon ships inside
All of Asa bay did watch
The wonder raise to the sky
Now must the God of the cross be pleased satisfied
Just outside the circle of the crowd

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Explore the Beautiful Darkness: Worlds Beyond Worlds by John R. Fultz

Explore the Beautiful Darkness: Worlds Beyond Worlds by John R. Fultz

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Worlds Beyond Worlds by John R. Fultz
DMR Books (182 pages, $12.99 in trade paperback, April 3, 2021)
Cover by Brian LeBlanc

Volume I: Transcending the Illusions of Modernity and Reason.: The first thing you must understand is that the One True World is not a figment of your imagination, and it does not lie in some faraway dimension. To help you understand the relationship between the True World and the False, you must envision the True World lying beneath the False, as a man can lay hidden beneath a blanket, or a woman’s true face can be hidden by an exquisite mask.

(Fultz, “The Thirteen Texts of Arthyria” )

You Want A Piece of Me?

The Brian LeBlanc cover of Worlds Beyond Worlds: The Short Fiction of John R. Fultz shows the revenant Chivaine displaying the trophy head of his enemy. As a reader, do you want to accept his challenge? You are invited to explore the beautiful darkness. The tile and cover set up expectations well, so get ready to explore planetary landscapes, witches, twisted creatures, and villainous heroes. Worlds Beyond Worlds is exactly what it says, a collection that takes the reader/protagonists into other worlds which are beyond even stranger ones.

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Fringe Grimdark: Crimson Crown by BJ Swann, and Beyond Barlow by Jason R. Koivu

Fringe Grimdark: Crimson Crown by BJ Swann, and Beyond Barlow by Jason R. Koivu

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Readers typically differentiate stereotypical High Fantasy (elves, dwarves, wizards-with-pointy-hats with a slant toward happy adventuring) vs. Low Fantasy (more “realism” & “earthier” milieu, with a focus on humans defending trenches at a battlefront or crawling through crypts to save a maiden or rob a god). The latter encompasses sub-genres like Sword & Sorcery and the contemporary-named Grimdark.

Why stop at regular Grimdark when you can go further? This post highlights two New Treasures that are arguably Grimdark, but still push the boundaries of what is expected. At the very least, they should appeal to dark fantasy readers who desire something fresh (whatever label the books deserve). To learn if these are right for you, read on:

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The Aesthetics of Sword & Sorcery: An Interview with Philip Emery

The Aesthetics of Sword & Sorcery: An Interview with Philip Emery

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The Shadow Cycles by Philip Emery (Immanion Press, August 2011)

This continues our interviews on “Beauty in Weird Fiction” with previous topics being:

Are you haunted, perhaps obsessed, with Sword & Sorcery?

Heroic fiction is infectious. Sometimes vicariously “being the hero” via reading is not enough to satisfy the call. Being compelled to write manifests next. Ghosts may be to blame. Robert E. Howard (1906-1936) is credited with originating the genre with his characters: Conan the Barbarian, King Kull, Solomon Kane, and Bran Mak Morn; in a 1933 correspondence to his friend and contemporary author, Clark Ashton Smith, Howard explained his interaction with the muse that inspired his Conan yarns.

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Guided by an Unknown Destiny: Eda Blessed II by Milton J. Davis

Guided by an Unknown Destiny: Eda Blessed II by Milton J. Davis

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Eda Blessed II Cover Art by Stanley Weaver, Jr.
Publisher: ‎ Mvmedia, LLC (June 19, 2021) / Paperback: ‎ 330 pages

Eda Blessed II

Juneteenth was just marked a federal holiday in the United States to commemorate the June 19th, 1866 end to slavery. Like many memorial dates, it resonates with equal parts celebration and reflection. This June 19th, 2021, we highlight the book release of Eda Blessed II, appropriately published by a champion of Black Speculative Fiction, Milton Davis (author and editor of MVmedia, a publishing company specializing in Afrofuturism, and Steamfunk). Notably, Milton Davis has been a proponent and publisher of works by Sword & Soul originator Charles Saunders who is known for his Imaro/Nyumbani series (check out the tour guide to the Imaro Series on Black Gate). Omari Ket is the protagonist of Eda Blessed and his first name is an anagram for Imaro, but apparently, that was not done intentionally; in any event, Omari is a very different personality than Imaro.

Omari Ket is a rogue warrior; an Agency onto himself

From the first Eda Blessed, we know that Omari Ket is a rogue warrior, not a spy, but he is as suave, cunning, and as lethal as any Secret Agent Man. ‘Agency’ is a term for the capacity of a character to act independently, and Omari is an Agency onto himself: he reports to no one. Omari is a ladies’ man in a dog-eat-dog world. If you like a cut-throat, libertine, action-oriented protagonist, then you are ‘Eda Blessed.’ 

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