Howard Andrew Jones | Karavansara

The so-called ebook revolution has brought back a number of genres and formats that for a few decades had been marginalized to say the least.
The short form is back – novelettes and novellas, novels in the 40.000-words standard of the paperbacks of old.
Pulp is making a big comeback, in all its assorted flavors – from hero pulps to adventure cliffhangers to sword & sorcery.

And for a fantasy reader, the return of sword & sorcery – the small-scale, proletarian, none-too-heroic kind of fantasy that normally involves rogues trying to save their own skin, not champions trying to save the world – is a much welcome event.

I’m currently reading – and very much enjoying – Dariel R.A. Quiogue’s Swords of the Four Winds, a highly satisfying collection of sword & sorcery stories set in the East. Continue reading →

Rogue Blades Entertainment has a strong track record as far as I’m concerned – I have a few of their anthologies here on my shelf, and they never failed to deliver as promised: entertaining, original, solid no-frills sword & sorcery.

So I was extremely interested when Writing Fantasy Heroes was announced – a multi-author collection of essays on sword & sorcery writing, from one of my favorite purveyours of sword & sorcery, edited by J.M. Waltz.
What could go wrong with that?

Well, first there was the fact that the Italian Amazon does not carry the book.
Then, the delivery guy was unable to find my house (it happens, I live in the wilderness), and sent my copy back to the international seller from which I had ordered it.
With the refund, I got me a second copy.
And it got to my house two days before Easter, and waited in the pouring rain, hanging halfway out of my (flooded) mailbox, for my return home from the hospital.

Continue reading →