Samuel Dillon crafted this beauty, the most revealing portrait of Dr. Grave and his three daughters ever made. It will be part of a collection called "Grave's Daughters" due out sometime in 2025.
Link to post (click here)
One of the most unique voices working in Sword & Sorcery today is S. E. Lindberg. I met Seth a few years back and we’ve corresponded frequently as well as running into each other at such sites as Black Gate and Goodreads. Lindberg has put together a unique setting for what he calls “Dyscrasia Fiction.” Dyscrasia means “a bad mixture of liquids,” which is related to the Greek concept of the four “humors” of Blood, Phlegm, Black Bile, and Yellow Bile. In Dyscrasia fiction, these humors are sources of magical power and often soul and body corrupting influences.
In 2022, Dyscrasia Fiction appeared in Book of Blades Vol. 1.
The necromantic Doctor Grave still struggles to "raise" three daughters; so the chronology of Ember, Leech, and Mel continues with "Breaching Earth's Womb" appearing in the just-released A Book of Blades Vol. II!
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Reposting from Goodman Game's website:
Tales From the Magician’s Skull Issue 9 is now available for purchase in stores and online, and as always we’re sharing samples of every story in the issue!
S.E. Lindberg’s grimdark fable “Orphan Maker,” dares to ask the question ‘can a flaming be-horned skeletal revenant truly be one of the good guys, and can you trust the motives of a guy named Doctor Grave?’
Samuel Dillon’s frantic combat between otherworldly horrors sets the stage for this latest sample from the Skull’s current issue!
Be sure you don’t miss Tales From the Magician’s Skull’s undyingly cool ninth issue — out now!
Be sure to check out Tales From the Magician’s Skull Issue #9 for more tremendous sword-and-sorcery fiction!
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| S.E. Lindberg shown here in intern garb & magical holiday helm of hope +1, tickled with his being blessed with a story in Issue #9 of Tales From the Magician's Skull |
Kickstarter backers are getting their copies now, right before Xmas 2022. Pre-orders for the general public can be done at Goodman Games - Issue 9 link! Obviously, I am honored to be in the same volume as James Enge, Dave Ritzlin, Nathan Long, and others (the full table of contents is below). This publication builds on Dyscrasia Fiction 2022's appearances in DMR's Terra Incognita and Rogues in the House's Book of Blades anthology
2022 offered a full year of writing/networking: being the Event Coordinator for the 2022 GenCon Writers Symposium & moderating several panels, debuting on the Rogues in the House Podcasts, surviving an internship for the Skull (which earned me the titles of both "the only named intern" and "intern of the year"). Heck at GenCon, in addition to hanging out with Matt John from RitH (and Deane), I even got to chill with S&S/Weird Fiction guru Jason Ray Carney (who, with Chuck Clark, edit/publish Whetstone; Issue #2 of that has a Dyscrasia Fiction entry too).
Previous posts captured videos of the GCWS 2022 panels & podcast and more:
STORIES
Three Festivals by James Enge
A Tale of Morlock Ambrosius
Kalx, brazen defender of the city, had left a trail of
ruins in his wake. Morlock followed the trail until he passed the border of the
city — the line that Zlynth had called the pomerium. By the time Morlock caught
up to the brazen monster, Kalx was already outlined in scarlet flames, fighting
a cloud of Furies.
The Raven-Feeder’s Tower by Philip Brian Hall
The skeleton was held upright by a tall stake driven deep
into the ground, to which support its spine was fixed by leather bonds. The
breastplate covered bare white ribs and the helmet’s visor protected merely the
empty eye-sockets of a morbidly-grinning skull.
Blue Achernar by Tais Teng
An Homage to Clark Ashton Smith
Lady Magida had slept in the tombs of magicians so feared
that their names had never been written down, walking into their death-dreams,
leafing through their grimoires that had long ago turned to dust. When she
strode through the necropolises the ghûls fled like whimpering hares.
Pawns’ Gambit by Nathan Long
A Tale of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser
The monks howled at this violation of their sacred place,
and Mouser saw he had been incorrect when he had thought them all unarmed. From
every sleeve sprang a dagger, and they held them high as they rushed to
encircle him.
Orphan Maker by S.E. Lindberg
“It is her time to sacrifice,” Ingrid explained while
adjusting her mother’s hair. “Ma resisted. She escaped from the Bleeding Tree.”
She laughed while shrugging. “But her blood is stronger than her faith!”
The Necromancer and the Forgotten Hero by D.M.
Ritzlin
The wound was still fresh, but not a drop of blood
escaped from it. Hyallbor wondered what sort of necro- mantical energies were
sustaining him.
The Glass Dragon by David Gullen
Rhayder staggered grey-skinned from the mouth of a
labyrinth of seventy-seven turns wielding a felling axe with a head of
star-forged iron.
ARTICLES
The Monster Pit by Terry Olson
Enter the monster pit! Down here in the pit, we provide
tabletop RPG fans with playable DCC RPG game statistics for
the creatures in this issue of Tales From The Magician’s Skull.
The Skull Speaks by The Skull Himself
Edited by: Howard Andrew Jones
Cover Illustration: Sanjulian
Interior Illustrations by: Chris Arneson, Randy Broecker, Samuel Dillon,
Jason Edwards, Tom Galambos, Doug Kovacs, Aaron Kreader, Brad McDevitt, and
Stefan Poag
The mighty Skull revealed the cover to issue #9 today over in Kickstarter:
"Issue #9 is nearly complete and slated to begin layout soon."
The cover reveals a story of mine within its covers. More Dyscrasia Fiction is coming!
This expands on a press release for Terra Ingognita posted on Black Gate this May. NEW TREASURES: DMR PRESENTS TERRA INCOGNITA: LOST WORLDS OF FANTASY AND ADVENTURE
Since I am a contributing author, I will bypass any rating and just provide a perspective that readers may appreciate.
Readers of Black Gate will be familiar with D.M. Ritzlin (champion of DMR books) and Doug Draa (editor of Weirdbook Magazine and Startling Stories).. For this they gathered seven authors, including many Black Gate veterans (contributors or featured in the articles): David C. Smith, Adrian Cole, S.E. Lindberg, J. Thomas Howard, Milton Davis, John C. Hocking, & Howard Andrew Jones. Expect trips into lost worlds…but expect them with a fantasy, Sword & Sorcery bias. Each story presents different storytelling styles in varied milieus, from Cosmic Horror, Irish and African mythologies, to complete fantasy worlds on land and sea.
Unknown territory: An unexplored country or field of knowledge — Merriam Webster
“Does that sound exciting and dangerous? I hope so. We never know what’s over the hill or ahead of us up around the bend. It might be something exciting and dangerous. Or simply wondrous and surprising. Perhaps even a mixture of all these. We never know though, until we take that final step into the unknown. The blank areas on old maps were labeled hic sunt dracones, here there be dragons. As frightening and as daunting as that sounds, it’s also a siren’s call to the adventurous among us.
… Looking back now, it’s clear to see that a large portion of genre literature dealt directly with this theme. Writers such as Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, and Abraham Merritt devoted a large portion of their work to stories about exploring the unknown.
… For this collection we are sticking to the realms of fantasy in order to see what is out there, lost and lurking. I envy every one of you. I do. Truly! You are getting to read these marvelous tales of adventure for the very first time. And this is one of those things in life that you can only experience once.” – snippets from Doug Draa’s introduction
Terra Incognita: Lost Worlds of Fantasy and Adventure
You are holding a ticket in your hands. A ticket for a voyage of thrills, wonder, and discovery as seven of today’s top fantasists, each one a master of Heroic Fantasy, transport you to lands beyond your imagination. Lands of fantasy and adventure. And the only passport needed is your imagination.
The cover by Laura Gornik is splendidly appropriate for lost world travel/adventure. I adore the apparent phase-inversion of the space (i.e., dark objects dispersed in white fog …that get flipped into white bubbles in dark tentacles/beams). It calls to mind M.C. Escher’s famous tiling (i.e. Sky and Water) and it represents the travel the reader will experience going from reality into seamless other-worlds.
This is one of my favorites of the collection since it wholeheartedly embraces the lost-world theme. It is a superbly executed homage to Howard Phillip’s Lovecraft work (arguably easier to read than most of HPL actually). Cole invites the reader to leave reality in HPL style: from the framing of the story to the call-outs to the elder god Nyarlathotep, the landscapes of Kadath like the Plateau of Leng, and the exploratory expedition akin to At the Mountains of Madness. The pacing and wonder are spot-on. Its placement before my story is fortuitous. This builds the Eldritch culture vs human civilization, and has strong does of fungal body horror & Insect-men (that echo my One Hive. Two Queens.)
Fungus Excerpt
"When we reached the cavern, we rested. What a place that was! Gouged out of the naked rock, certainly by prediluvian hands, it reared up to an invisible ceiling and spread out on all sides, unfathomable without stronger light. There were countless rocks and heaps of stone debris, but it was clear even in the murk that some of these blocks and monoliths had been deliberately cut and shaped. Intelligent beings had once lived here, though how long ago that had been was impossible to calculate….The fungi seemed to be burying into the rock, as though feeding from it. It seemed to be in varying degrees of development: there were grouped globules of sickly white, criss-crossed with purple veins, while stacked above these were layer upon layer of broad mushrooms, some of which had opened up to release, I assumed, countless spores. Their colours varied from livid yellow to soiled brown, and higher still up the cavern walls, the thread-like mycelia spread like a colossal spider’s web, ever probing for cracks and crevices, anchoring further colonization."Insect-Humans:
"I saw, too, insectoid, human-sized beings with exoskeletons, living in fantastically complex nest networks, protected by their warrior armies, always striving to expand their empire, adding to the wars and tribulations of a world in turmoil. It was no surprise to me to see the extent to which dinosaurs roamed, some wild and terrible, feared and avoided by lesser creatures, man included, others living in a kind of harmony with man, used as cavalry in his armies, a formidable fighting force."
This presents a “weird fiction” take on the civilization-vs-barbarism trope. Here, the colonization of a lost land pits civilized humanity vs. eldritch natives. Spearheading the conflict are two sisters, humanoid golem maidens, who vie for control over an abandoned, eldritch hive (their birthplace). These golems are hybrids by nature, humans shaped from the earth. Melanie leans toward her earthy constitution; deemed a child-eating, bog-loving lamia by occupying humans, she aims to protect nature and the land’s past, going so far as to nurture neglected nests of larvalwyrmen. Her sister, Ember, embraces human proclivities; she leads the colonialization of the hive and aims to erase all eldritch history. One hive cannot accommodate multiple queens. Witness the battle that will decide nature’s owner.
This tale features two golem daughters of Dr. Grave, who is prominent in my Dyscrasia Fiction; a few other short stories about Gave’s golem family have appeared online and can be read now for free:
All my writing is based on alchemy and is designed to feel bizarrely unique (i.e. “weird). BTW a key scene was catalyzed by Peter Jackson’s 2001 adaptation of Tolkien’s Fellowship of the Ring, the Flight to the Ford scene specifically. Of course, one must replace [the angelic Arwen and the ailing Frodo] with a dark goddess saving giant larvae, to better envision the inspiration.
This is another favorite of mine since it resonates the theme of lost worlds, an escape from modernity and civilization with glorious battle in the Irish-inspired underworld. Stylistically, it feels lyrical like Dunsany, but it is so action-heavy that REH fans will devour the melee. Here’s an excerpt:"He drew his runic blade. The combatants circled. The Dullahan’s range gave him advantage, and Reglin knew it and was eager to close the distance. Thrice the whip kept him at bay, but at last he gained an opening. He dove in, driving his sword towards the armored chest. The markings on the blade became luminous. But the Dullahan brought round his other weapon, his very head, and it crashed into the lunging Fomorian’s face. The boney jaws clenched, tearing into the blue skin and red flesh. Blood ran down the ivory teeth. Reglin faltered and the whip came roaring round. But even blinded by his pain the admiral caught the skeletal weapon with his sword. Viridian flames erupted where the two artifacts met, but Reglin’s free hand still clutched his bleeding face, and the Dullahan struck once more with his head, and his jaws latched onto Reglin’s throat. They tore, and blood erupted high into the air. The Fomorian slumped down to the beach, his sanguine ruin profaning the white shore."
Ostensibly the conflict is against desert people invading, but this story highlights the prelude to battle. The hero Koboye seeks out help from the lost city of Mogai. It felt more like a chapter than it did a stand-alone tale. Slower-paced than the preceding stories, this African-inspired fantasy is a welcome shift in variety. Milton is known for being a champion of Sword & Soul, writing his own characters (i.e., Changa, Omari) and spearheading MLVmedia (publishers of frofuturism, Sword and Soul, Steamfunk and more!).
Many will know Hocking from his Conan pastiche. Of course, he also has his Archivist series (check out that tour guide here: Archiving the King’s Blade Champion: An interview with John C. Hocking). Including an archivist character in Terra Incognita to document the otherworld makes complete sense! As with Hocking’s short stories that have appeared in many venues, including a bunch on Tales from the Magician’s Skull, he lays out a plot that ramps up continuously and delivers with some wild creative creature. Classic Hocking here.
Fantasy readers will likely recognize Howard Andrew Jones who recently finished his Oathsworn Trilogy and has been a long-time contributor to Pathfinder novels; he also is the editor for Tales From the Magician's Skull Magazine and his interns carefully obey his every command lest they be immolated. HAJ has several sets of characters he likes to write about, like his Asim and Dabir Sword & Sandal stories; without spoiling much, this story occurs in Howard’s Hanuvar universe (inspired by Hannibal the Carthaginian). This episode occurs on the high seas and has long-dead sorcerers crawling back to life.
Terra Incognita:
Lost Worlds of Fantasy and Adventure
You are holding a ticket in your hands. A ticket for a voyage of thrills, wonder, and discovery as seven of today's top fantasists, each one a master of Heroic Fantasy, transport you to lands beyond your imagination. Lands of fantasy and adventure. And the only passport needed is your imagination.
David C. Smith's courageous rebels under the leadership of the undying warrior Akram must form an alliance with an ancient race to overthrow murderous usurpers, along with their necromantic masters, who are hellbent on destroying their kingdom in an insane attempt to conquer the world.
Adrian Cole transports a group of explorers to a Lovecraftian netherworld of no return. Or is there, if one is courageous enough?
S.E. Lindberg gives us a distant world where two alien sisters, who were created in the image of man, wage a war against each other to determine the future of their world.
J. Thomas Howard reveals the harsh realities of ancient Eire, Samhain, and the war between the Fomorians and Tuatha Dé Danann.
Milton Davis introduces us to a young man, barely past boyhood, who has to brave great dangers on his own to seek the help of ancient allies who may no longer exist.
John C. Hocking regales with the plight of a young archivist who is forced at swordpoint to travel into a parallel world full of horrors from a time long forgotten.
Howard Andrew Jones sets sail into adventure with a group of sea-going merchants and their passengers. Many of them are not who they seem to be and only reveal their true selves once a sunken kingdom from the bottom of the sea launches an attack against the travelers.
Release date: May 2022
Trade Paperback: 9” x 6”, 222 pages, $14.99
Digital: $4.99
Another Dyscrasia Fiction short story has been published, this time in Swords & Sorcery Magazine's July 2021 edition. "Forging Independence" focuses on Doctor Grave's struggle to raise daughters in the Underworld. Have a look. It's free to read online.
Doctor Grave, the golem necromancer from Dyscrasia Fiction, appears in Whetstone #2's RAISING DAUGHTERS. This is a stand-alone tale occurring chronologically after Spawn of Dyscrasia.
"Lindberg's wondrous tale is like peering through a microscope or telescope and discovering an alien world almost entirely non-human, but nevertheless still recognizable: children are always a challenge, but when you create them by untraditional means, you can wind up with far more than you bargained for." - Jason Ray Carney (editor) with Chuck Clark (Assoc. Editor)
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| Cover Art by Rick McCollum |
Editor’s Note Jason Ray CarneyThe City of Tombs George JacobsAn Unforgiveable Interruption D.M. RitzlinThe Stain on the Skull Simon RulemanThe Augur of Khoalse Corey GrahamDark Meditations J. Thomas HowardThe Mortal Essence Ulysses MaurerHounds Chuck ClarkMother of Malevolence Chase FolmarRaising Daughters S.E. LindbergThe Slain of Talhn R. SagusUnder the Oak Zack TaylorBest Left to Professionals Jace PhelpsRolf's Ride Frank Coffman
WHETSTONE is an amateur magazine that seeks to discover, inspire, and publish emerging authors who are enthusiastic about the tradition of "pulp sword and sorcery." Writers in this tradition include (but are not limited to) the following: Robert E. Howard, Fritz Leiber, Jack Vance, Michael Moorcock, Karl Edward Wagner, David C. Smith, and many more. "Pulp sword and sorcery" emphasizes active protagonists, supernatural menaces, and preindustrial (mostly ancient and medieval) settings. Some "pulp sword and sorcery" straddles the line between historical and fantasy fiction; at WHETSTONE, however, we prefer "secondary world settings," other worlds liberated from the necessity of historical accuracy.
First released Friday, December 4th, 2020
Cover art by Rick McCollum
Whetstone Seal by Bill Cavalier.
Skull graphic by Gray Moth.
Webpage: https://whetstonemag.blogspot.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/whetstonemag/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/SorceryWs
Discord: https://discord.gg/hJKdkyDuUb
Editor/Publisher: Jason Ray Carney
Associate Editor: Chuck Clark
Well, you never know when something will become viral on the internet, or in this case: parasitic. When a Dyscrasia Fiction fan, Mr. Ward, was reading Spawn of Dyscrasia, his wife interrupted to see if he wanted to eat lava cakes (a gourmet chocolate cupcake with gooey insides). Mr. Ward first heard this as "larvae cakes" since the book (the whole series actually) features lots of larvae creatures, Larvalwyrmen in particular (giant larvae of the elder insects cursed never to mature once the Queen is killed). Larvae-filled cupcakes sounds gross! But they can taste good if we use non-parasitic ingredients.
