Senchas Claideb's Sword & Sorcery Sound-Off
A Rallying Call for Contemporary Authors of Sword and Sorcery Fantasy
To conclude January’s theme of Sword & Sorcery fantasy, here is a list of contemporary authors who write in this niche subgenre of fiction. Each of these authors included are who we have to thank for keeping the fiery spirit of S&S alive through a love of the old stories and hard work on their own craft.
For the month of January, I had a Q/A survey as part of my posts for authors to fill out, talking about how they got into S&S and what kinds of stories they have published.
I am extremely grateful for each of them for answering my “call to arms” and hope that this inspires more writers and publishers to help promote those who choose to write what is true to themselves.
Show them some support by picking up and reviewing their books and stories, and follow them online!
Christopher Rowe
Q: Which sword & sorcery author or story made you want to write and publish in this subgenre of fantasy and why?
A: [Robert E.] Howard and [Fritz] Leiber
Q: What was the very first, definitive "Sword & Sorcery" story you wrote? What was it about? Can we read it anywhere?
A: “The Angelstone,” Swords and Sorcery Magazine. June 2023.
Q: What are your most recent publications from 2020-4? These may be short stories or novels you've written yourself or collections you've edited. (Share the links to them as well!).
A: Wow. Since 2020 (inclusive), I've published eleven short stories, two novelettes, and four novellas. The three definitively s&s short stories were all published in 2023, as I've only recently become really interested in the genre.
“The Angelstone,” Swords and Sorcery Magazine. June 2023. [Link above]
“The Dogman,” Whetstone website. August 2023.
“The Moult,” Beneath Ceaseless Skies. December 2023.
Q: Would you kindly share an excerpt from the publication you're most proud of?
A: The publication I'm most proud of is my recent Tordotcom novella, The Navigating Fox. But I sense you're asking about sword & sorcery, so here's the first paragraph of "The Moult."
Merton eased the hide straps digging into his shoulders and watched the market close down with the sunset. A spice seller with wares of questionable provenance made a careful show of sweeping her conical heaps of pungent, colorful powders into waxed kegs with a broom of Guild-approved cattail reeds. An old creature keeper who Merton had not seen draw a single customer all day coaxed his grumbling library into a copper-wire cage, which he then covered with a drape of peacock feathers, ensuring that no printer’s devils would trouble the creature through the coming night.
Q: How can readers follow you and support your work further? Share any links to social media pages, blogs, email lists, or websites.
A:
christopherrowe.blogspot.com
christopherrowe.net
Facebook and Bluesky as "Christopher Rowe"
Adam McPhee
Q: Which sword & sorcery author or story made you want to write and publish in this subgenre of fantasy and why?
A: Heroes Die by Matthew Woodring Stover made me realize the power of the genre.
Q: What was the very first, definitive "Sword & Sorcery" story you wrote? What was it about? Can we read it anywhere?
A: Chramn the Unconquered, about a warrior whose family was slaughtered on the tundra he call home. Available here: https://web.archive.org/web/20201126182854/http://schlock.co.uk/pb/wp_b9ef15a0/wp_b9ef15a0.html
Q: What are your most recent publications from 2020-4? These may be short stories or novels you've written yourself or collections you've edited. (Share the links to them as well!).
A: Diary of a Wolf, in Old Moon Quarterly, Issue 6, January 2024.
The Grave Robbers of Eidelhelm, in Hellarkey 2 from Malarkey Books, 2023.
The Hippogriff, in Wyngraf, volume 2, 2022.
The Jarl's Butter, in SFS Stories, issue 7, 2022.
Chramn the Unconquered, in Schlock! Ezine, 2020.
Chramn of the Wizard's Pingo, in Dream of Shadows, from 2021.
Q: How can readers follow you and support your work further? Share any links to social media pages, blogs, email lists, or websites.
A: I'm on twitter and bluesky with the username @ChalicothereX, or you can check out my newsletter at adamsnotes.substack.com
Dariel R. A. Quiogue
Q: Which sword & sorcery author or story made you want to write and publish in this subgenre of fantasy and why?
A: Robert E. Howard, of course, along with Homer and Herodotus. I'm fascinated by history and adventures in history or historical-feeling milieus, so that's what I write.
Q: What was the very first, definitive "Sword & Sorcery" story you wrote? What was it about? Can we read it anywhere?
A: I've lost the earliest ones, since those were stored on paper that got moldy. The earliest preserved stories are in my collection, Swords of the Four Winds, and an S&S/historical horror piece upcoming in Old Moon Quarterly #6.
Q: What are your most recent publications from 2020-4? These may be short stories or novels you've written yourself or collections you've edited. (Share the links to them as well!).
A: Track of the Snow Leopard, The Dragon's Graveyard in Whetstone #5, Temple of the Ghost Tiger in Rakehell #1, Curse of the Horsetail Banner and The Demon of Tashi Tzang in New Edge of Sword and Sorcery issues 0 and 2, Isle of the Thousand-Eyed Strangler in Heroic Fantasy Quarterly #58 and Ardax in Antillia in DMR Books' Die By the Sword.
Q: Would you kindly share an excerpt from the publication you're most proud of?
A:
They plunged into the jungle in a ragged, heedless mob.
Caught up in the gold’s net of enchantment, they forgot all of Mala-Diwata’s repeated warnings, ignoring the shouts of the crewmen left with the ship to come back. The ghost of some protesting voice rang weakly at the back of Pandara’s mind as he ran into the gloom then slowed as his eyes adjusted and the open beach gave way to the close and treacherous ground of an ages-old rainforest.
Hanging banyan tendrils brushed his face and licked his shoulders with softly sinister caresses. The brilliance of bone-white sand and sparkling sapphire sea gave way to dappled green shadow then a cavern-like gloom, and cavern-like too was the tortured labyrinth between the mighty, many-trunked trees. Some of the braided boles seemed as wide as his karakoa galley was long. Here and there, he caught glimpses of the banyans’ long-dead host trees rotting away in their deathly embrace, here and there the Stygian hollows left by the vanished host trees’ corpses yawned like the boneless maws of sea worms.
Sweat was soon rolling off his dark, bronzed body as he moved, for it was hot and stifling here, the sea breeze unable to penetrate the walls of thick vegetation. The musty odors of leaves rotting away without ever seeing sun again, and the thick moss covering the tangled roots snaking like pythons and crocodiles across the uneven ground, filled Pandara’s nostrils.
From Island of the Thousand-Eyed Strangler, HFQ #58
Q: How can readers follow you and support your work further? Share any links to social media pages, blogs, email lists, or websites.
A: https://swashbucklingplanets.wordpress.com/
Joseph C. Chaput ()
Q: Which sword & sorcery author or story made you want to write and publish in this subgenre of fantasy and why?
A: Hour of the Dragon [by Robert E. Howard]
Q: What was the very first, definitive "Sword & Sorcery" story you wrote? What was it about? Can we read it anywhere?
A: Bear & Cub and over on Substack
Q: What are your most recent publications from 2020-4? These may be short stories or novels you've written yourself or collections you've edited. (Share the links to them as well!).
A: Victor Tempestsson & I have a new volume to be out in Feb; Crown of Blood; https://www.amazon.com/Victor-Tempestsson-Joseph-C-Chaput/dp/B0CPD71C1Y
Q: How can readers follow you and support your work further? Share any links to social media pages, blogs, email lists, or websites.
A: https://substack.com/@thebrotherskrynn?utm_source=user-menu
Q: Which sword & sorcery author or story made you want to write and publish in this subgenre of fantasy and why?
A: Michael Moorcock's Elric of Melboboné saga. Moorcock's unique take on the genre, as well as his judicious use of darker fantasy elements and a well thought out multiverse that's actually effective, (unlike modern contemporaries) came together under his hand to create a sword & sorcery world that beautifully blends darker character driven stories with the sense of adventure and wild fantasy that we also see from writers like Howard and Lieber. His work struck me from the very first time I read it and inspired me to finally sit down and put serious work into my writing again.
Q: What was the very first, definitive "Sword & Sorcery" story you wrote? What was it about? Can we read it anywhere?
A: The first definitive story would be In the Giant's Shadow, which is currently available on my Substack. I also hope to release a physical copy before the end of 2024.
Q: What are your most recent publications from 2020-4? These may be short stories or novels you've written yourself or collections you've edited. (Share the links to them as well!).
A: My Substack, "Tales of Calamity and Triumph", is currently home to all my recent publications, book reviews, and essays.
Q: Would you kindly share an excerpt from the publication you're most proud of?
A: This excerpt comes from the third chapter of In the Giant's Shadow:
Gaiur blinked and shook her head a little. This had to be some kind of illusion, some effect of the ritual. Either that or her mind was making these wild things up in response to having her eyes gouged. The image would vanish if she just willed it to, she was sure of that.
But it didn’t. As she stared at the fox, it stared right back. Finally she asked, “Who, or what are you?”
“What am I?” the fox replied. “Why, I’m a fox, of course! Surely you’ve seen a fox before? As for the who, it would be just as well if you called me Renald. Not my true name for I don’t really have one, being a fox and all, but the last person I was sent to guide insisted on calling me that and to be quite frank, I didn’t have the patience to belabor the point, particularly since you human types seem to prefer having names assigned to things, even when it is quite unnecessary.”
Q: How can readers follow you and support your work further? Share any links to social media pages, blogs, email lists, or websites.
A: The best thing to do is to follow and subscribe to my Substack, which will get you notifications of my work both through emails, the site itself, and the mobile app if you're using it.
Jospeh Weiss()
Q: Which sword & sorcery author or story made you want to write and publish in this subgenre of fantasy and why?
A: Lord of the Rings [by J.R.R. Tolkien]
Q: What was the very first, definitive "Sword & Sorcery" story you wrote? What was it about? Can we read it anywhere?
A: Voyage of the Dawn Breaker - and yes you can. https://books2read.com/u/4A2Wnd
Q: What are your most recent publications from 2020-4? These may be short stories or novels you've written yourself or collections you've edited. (Share the links to them as well!).
A: I've written "A broken woman's True Desire" and "The Reeve's Tale" on Substack
Q: Would you kindly share an excerpt from the publication you're most proud of?
A:
Q: How can readers follow you and support your work further? Share any links to social media pages, blogs, email lists, or websites.
A:
or Tel Gega
Q: Which sword & sorcery author or story made you want to write and publish in this subgenre of fantasy and why?
A: Solomon Kane and the Shadow
Q: What was the very first, definitive "Sword & Sorcery" story you wrote? What was it about? Can we read it anywhere?
A: Into the Hedge
Q: What are your most recent publications from 2020-4? These may be short stories or novels you've written yourself or collections you've edited. (Share the links to them as well!).
A: Knights of the Autumn Crown. Man with evil eyes. The Inquisition of Alejandro.
Q: Would you kindly share an excerpt from the publication you're most proud of?
A: "Where the devil fears to go he sends a woman" Polish Proverb
Q: How can readers follow you and support your work further? Share any links to social media pages, blogs, email lists, or websites.
A:
Q: Which sword & sorcery author or story made you want to write and publish in this subgenre of fantasy and why?
A: I stumbled across the soundtrack to the game Conan Exiles (I've never played it) and from that started reading Conan stories, beginning with The Phoenix on the Sword. At least I think this was the start, it could have been a simple want to write fantasy that wasn't about a world-ending problem.
Q: What was the very first, definitive "Sword & Sorcery" story you wrote? What was it about? Can we read it anywhere?
A: The very first was Tarok the Wanderer and a Question for Gold which can be read here -
I wrote a number of Tarok stories, influences explicit, before writing other Sword & Sorcery stories alongside my other works of fantasy, scifi, and horror.
Q: What are your most recent publications from 2020-4? These may be short stories or novels you've written yourself or collections you've edited. (Share the links to them as well!).
A: Too many to list individually but a good place to start is my Free Collection - https://reddoscarwrites.substack.com/p/the-free-collection - this includes short stories and novellas. If you're wanting to jump into a 10 chapter fantasy novella, start here - https://reddoscarwrites.substack.com/p/forlorn-hope-chapter-1 If you're wanting a short story this one about dwarves was well received - https://reddoscarwrites.substack.com/p/elbar-goldfist-strikes-the-earth
Q: Would you kindly share an excerpt from the publication you're most proud of?
A: I'm not sentimental with my writing and rarely remember particular passages once the post is live on SubStack. There's whole stories I'm quite pleased with though such as - https://reddoscarwrites.substack.com/p/our-sable-moon - or - https://reddoscarwrites.substack.com/p/ever-present-chaos - and - https://reddoscarwrites.substack.com/p/the-many-eyed-god
Q: How can readers follow you and support your work further? Share any links to social media pages, blogs, email lists, or websites.
A: Subscribe at reddoscarwrites.substack.com
Q: Which sword & sorcery author or story made you want to write and publish in this subgenre of fantasy and why?
A: Funnily enough, I'm primarily a high fantasy reader of the likes of Tolkien, Lewis, and Robert Jordan. I first developed my story-world, the Vaporous Realms, as an epic fantasy setting back when I was a teenager. It's a blend of prehistoric, historical, supernatural, and legendary elements: Cain and Abel, angels and demons, woolly mammoths and monsters, city-states and empires, seafaring raiders and barbarian hordes. Patrick Rothfuss is the one heroic fantasy author whose work has truly sparked my imagination as a writer. I decided to write my epic narrative in the form of historically flavored, dark-themed snippets, short stories, and novellas centered on conflicted, morally complicated characters. Only after publishing my first novella did I realize I'd been writing something more akin to "sword & sorcery" than high fantasy. Though I like to call it "sword & spirit" because the supernatural aspects are what many folks would call spiritual rather than magical.
Q: What was the very first, definitive "Sword & Sorcery" story you wrote? What was it about? Can we read it anywhere?
A: The first "sword & sorcery" story I wrote was the serialized first draft of my character Len the Wanderer's story. It's the origin story of the Vaporous Realms, inspired by the question, "What happened to Cain after Abel, exactly?" The original serial needed a lot of fat trimmed and holes filled (if I may mix metaphors), but it was the first story I'd ever completed beyond a few thousand words. I titled it "Len's Song." You can still find it on the Vaporous Realms Substack (paid or trial sub) or Kindle Vella (Songs of the Vaporous Realms: Dustsong).
Q: What are your most recent publications from 2020-4? These may be short stories or novels you've written yourself or collections you've edited. (Share the links to them as well!).
A: I published the heavily revised version of Len's story in 2023 as Dustsong: Len the Wanderer. I've got multiple serials going on Substack from different Vaporous Realms story-cycles, including the complete first-draft serial "Zshurii's Song" (Songs of the Vaporous Realms: Eastsong on Kindle Vella). I'm actively working on new editions of, and sequels to, Len the Wanderer's tale.
Q: Would you kindly share an excerpt from the publication you're most proud of?
A:
The upward sweep of the sharpened branch grazed his cloak. As Len lost his balance and fell, the spear-point pierced his shoulder through the goat hide.
Pain blossomed from his neck to his arm. He tumbled to the ground and rolled onto his back. Absently he realized he’d dropped his digging blade. All he could manage was to look skyward and wait for one of the barbarians to set upon him.
No such thing happened. Len mustered the strength to prop himself on his forearm. The slight pull on his injured shoulder produced a fearsome kind of hurt. It faded the instant he absorbed the horror before him.
Young Beard still knelt on the ground nearby. Everything else was changed. Shock had replaced fear in the youth’s wide eyes. His gaping expression was fixed like a carving in wood. White light seemed to glow within his chest, even through his clothes. In mere moments, the light grew red and warm enough to waft heat Len’s way. Flames burst through Young Beard’s tunic. They blackened the beast hide and danced in the morning air until, finally, the burning body crumpled into the tall grass.
Only then did Len heed the woman standing just behind the lifeless barbarian. Arms extended in front of her, she held an enormous knife of flame and light. Never had Len imagined such a being. Dark, red-tinted locks framed angular features. Her skin was the hue of pine, more akin to the barbarians than to Len. "If folk were wrought from trees, she’d be fashioned from a willow," he thought.
The willowy woman glided over Young Beard’s body. The flames rising from the corpse gave off no smoke and seemed not to affect her, or to catch the grass alight. She glared down her nose at Len. “Get you up,” she demanded.
Q: How can readers follow you and support your work further? Share any links to social media pages, blogs, email lists, or websites.
A: The best place to find and support my work is to join me on the Vaporous Realms Substack (currently, https://vaporousrealms.substack.com)—where all subscribers now get the Dustsong novella ebook! You can also check out the Vaporous Realms website at https://www.vaporousrealms.com, where I sell my book direct, including signed paperbacks.
Jeff Stewart or J. Stewart
Q: Which sword & sorcery author or story made you want to write and publish in this subgenre of fantasy and why?
A: I always loved Robert E Howard's blend of historical and weird fiction. I wanted to do something in a similar style.
Q: What was the very first, definitive "Sword & Sorcery" story you wrote? What was it about? Can we read it anywhere?
A: My first published story was Mountain Scarab. It was released by Rogue Blades Entertainment (RBE) in their anthology "Return of the Sword."
Q: What are your most recent publications from 2020-4? These may be short stories or novels you've written yourself or collections you've edited. (Share the links to them as well!).
A: All of my published stories were done with RBE, to include "Rage of the Behemoth," "Crossbones and Crosses," and "As You Wish."
Q: Would you kindly share an excerpt from the publication you're most proud of?
A: It's not an excerpt, but a review of my latest story.
“Bona Na Croin” by Jeff Stewart- Set in ancient Ireland. Fergus is looking for employment for his sword arm. Two rival kings are at odds. Fergus gets caught up in the bloodshed (a lot of the bloodshed is due to his own prowess.) Fergus ends up facing an Elder Being summoned by a druid from Gaul. This is rousing S&S! This is the exact type of story I want to see in every sword and sorcery anthology. Give Stewart a medal! Fantastic!- by Jim Kuenzli
His excellent review of the entire book can be found at:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/205326782-neither-beg-nor-yield
Q: How can readers follow you and support your work further? Share any links to social media pages, blogs, email lists, or websites.
A: My Amazon page is cited above and RBE's latest anthology, Neither Beg Nor Yield can be found on Amazon. It is one of the best S&S anthologies I have read in many years.
A very big thank you to all the contemporary S&S authors who participated in this sound-off. I would love to do something similar in the future and I hope this inspires other writers to help promote the current movers and shakers in whatever niche genre they write in.
Thank you to my readers for following along with the Sword & Sorcery theme this January. February will not have any particular theme but kicking off next month will be the second installment of my Hound scholarly review!
Be sure to share this post far and wide so that the authors listed above get the exposure they deserve!
If you were late to the party on this one or are just now seeing this and you are also an S&S author, feel free to answer the questions yourself in the comments!
Truly a fantastic idea to put something like this together. I see a few recognizable names from our Warrior Wednesday and Sword & Saturday events, as well as a couple new ones I don't recognize. All the more to read and follow! (As if I didn't have enough already XD)
This is such a cool idea!! Very interesting interviews and perspectives on the genre. Hopefully this gains more exposure for these authors.