Immolating Ember Appears in Savage Realms Monthly - July 2025

"Immolating Ember" appears in the July 2025 issue of Savage Realms Monthly!

It includes an interview with me too!

Available now (click here!)

The snarky seductress, Ember, has lead roles in two recent anthologies:

• "Embracing Ember" (2022). A Book of Blades Vol I (Rogues in the House Podcast)  
• "One Hive. Two Queens" (2022). Terra Incognita (DMR Books, edited by Douglas Draa)

Ember also appears as a minor character in:

• "Breaching Earth's Womb" (2023). A Book of Blades Vol. 2!   (Rogues in the House Podcast)  
• "Raising Daughters" (2020). Whetstone Amateur Sword & Sorcery Magazine Issue #2

Sometime in 2026, the collection Gave's Daughter will feature her, and her sisters Leech and Melanie!

Cover art from Bastien Lecouffe Deharme. Ember is the one on the right!

 

What Rough Beast? - Interview with Byrn Hammond

What Rough Beast? - Interview with Byrn Hammond - Simulcast on Black Gate

Waste Flowers and What Rough Beast? Tale of Goatskin, written by Bryn Hammond, both with cover art from Goran Gligović[/caption]

Black Gate has been tracking the inception and growth of New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine, starting with Micheal Harrington’s 2022 interview with Oliver Brackenbury (champion and editor of NESS), through 2023 with NESS's first two magazine releases (also Mele’s review of #1), and then into 2024 with  NESS’s first book “Beating Heart and Battle Axes and its two-novella combo book Double-Edged Sword & Sorcery, and (deep breath)... most recently... NESS's publication of a NEW Jirel of Joiry! (2025).

NESS crowdfunds 4 New Novellas (link)!

Surprise, NESS continues to blaze flaming hot new trails! Starting this September 9th 4PM and running through September 30th, NESS pitches four novellas. The first advertised is What Rough Beast?, written by Bryn Hammond (with cover art by Goran Gligović, and interior illustrations by Linnea Sterte).  As shown in the cover images above, this first novella is another Tale of Goatskin and has the same cover artist as Waste Flowers, Goran Gligović, who was featured in a mini-interview on Black Gates' previously.

Waste Flowers

Goatskin the goat nomad and her bandit love Sister Chaos guide merchants from Samarkand across the Gobi desert to the Mongols. But their caravan veers from one weird assault to weirder and worse. Who is behind this grotesquerie? Will they lose their way, or even lose their minds?

What Rough Beast?

Among the yak nomads, rowdy, restless young have thrown themselves into a cult of were-beasts ridden by unknown spirits, and they stalk Goatskin. They feel evil: evil by the lights of the intruder Temple, or by the banned old beliefs? And the shaman Goatskin searches for – a sad old man who set off on a quest his people call insane – what beast does he impossibly grapple? In the starry high meadows, what inhabits the night? Whose evil?

The other three novellas in the campaign promise wondrous, contemporary adventure, as per NESS's mission.  But here we highlight Bryn Hammond's contribution. Learn her muses and motivations, why she splatters paint on canvases, and learn why you'll want to follow Goatskin into the haunted Gobi desert and beyond as she battles seriously weird, undead armies and dragons!

Read this, learn inside scoops, follow Goatskin!

Chain Story 2 Project - Sword & Sorcery

The post below on the Chain Story project will be simultaneously cast on Black Gate this month (aug 4th): Click the below link to comment and read there:

Chain Story 2 Project - Sword &  Sorcery

It has been 15 years since The Chain Story project hit the internet; in 2010, Michael Stackpole led a bunch of authors to write stand-alone adventures all shared via "The Wanderers' Club."  All the stories were "chained" together with a common element but enabled every contributor to showcase their own characters/worlds. As standalone tales, they could be read in any order.  And.... all stories were free to readers (at least for several months, many times indefinitely)!

Chain Story 2 has just commenced and will follow the same approach. This round, expect Sword & Sorcery with a common magical artifact represented in the logo. Learn about the project and the first three entries now on Black Gate. Shortcuts to the free stories are included below.  Stories will be released every few weeks, so check the Chain Story website continuously, and you will also be treated to cool interviews (i.e., with S&S Champion Matthew John, who just released his second entry in his Maxus Cycle,  Within the Weeping Eye).

We'll aim to review the Chain Story project as it develops again in a few months, but read this to get onboarded!

GRAVE'S BROOD - Chain Story 2 - Sword and Sorcery by SE Lindberg

 

Grave's Brood

Doktor Grave sends Brood to recover a crown from the Red Orchard, only for Brood to find it is the source of a bloody plague caused by Grave’s experiments. Facing vampiric plants and their loyal clan, Brood must confront his past and question whether he can trust Grave or escape the nightmare himself.

Download Now free (from now until at least Dec 2025):

• Grave's Brood - PDF  [download from Google Drive: LINK]
• Grave's Brood - eBook  [LINK]

Cover Art

        “Infernal Executioner” Licensed 2020 from Antonio Jose Manzanedo Luis

Chain Story 2 Project:

The Chain Story is a cooperative effort between authors to share new work with their audiences. Each author provides a story for free (for a limited time, we do have to eat eventually) which everyone else shares with their readers, sharing new and exciting work by authors they may have missed. Each story becomes part of the chain by using bits and pieces of a central plot, which will expand as the project continues. The more you read, the more you will come to understand what’s going on between the world. If you like this idea, please let the authors know and support them in their work. The easiest way to do that, aside from buying stories, is to share news about The Chain Story on social media.

To learn more, click here: The Chain Story Project [link]. / https://www.chainstorycore.com/

https://www.chainstorycore.com/blog/free-fiction-round-four 

Also, check out the primer posted on this blog and Blackgate.com.

Dyscrasia Fiction Fans

Tackling Ravenloft is tough without the proper gear.

Thankfully, this Dungeons & Dragons crew has Dyscrasia Fiction merchandise!

Appreciate John, Dirk, Dave-1, and Dave-2 for being supportive. 

Back of T-Shirt

Interviewing the Champion of Heroes, Jason M Waltz

 Simulcast on Black Gate May 29, 2025

Interviewing the Champion of Heroes, Jason M Waltz of Rogue Blades Entertainment and Foundation

Jason M. Waltz has published 16 Books under Rogue Blades Entertainment (RBE), another 3 under Rogue Blades Foundation (RBF), having lured in authors Such as Brandon Sanderson, Orson Scott Card, C.L. Werner, Glen Cook, Steven Erikson, Ian C. Esslemont, William King, Andy Offutt, and spurred the writing careers of dozens. Not all are Sword and Sorcery (S&S), with weird western and pirate anthologies appearing, but most are.  Two of my favorite introductions to anthologies cap the ends of the RBE series: Return of the Sword (2008) and Neither Beg Nor Yield (2024 BG reviewed by Vredenburgh and Mele), the latter JMW refers to as his Swan Song marking a shift toward focusing on his own writing. Coincident with that, he has recently sunsetted the related RBF.  We'll discuss some of his works to date, but note that he has three stories seeing publication in July 2025!

He’s mingled with the Black Gate crew in many ways over the years, invited John O’Neill to pen the introductions, published many contributors here, and now he is interviewing them. Yes, you will be glad to know that even as he steers from publishing to writing more, he is still actively building the community through his 24 in 42 podcast [broadcasted via the Rogue Blades Presents YouTube channel]. Heck he is even hand in the game by guest editing Raconteur Press' first Sword & Sorcery anthology.  He never tires.

As we salute his heroic efforts, let’s learn more about his journey!

“Heroes are those who continue to do the ordinary in extraordinary times, and to do the extraordinary in ordinary times.” -  JMW 2008

Parth Kelkar joins Dyscrasia Fiction Fan Club

 Parth Kelkar survived a PhD Internship at work, and unlocked a trophy achievement of Helen's Daimones T-shirt!  You rock Parth.