Windy City Pulp and Paper 2026 - Highlights

Desi Accent Indian restaurant, left to right:  

Jojn Majka, Seth Lindberg, Greg Mele, Scarlet, friend of Arin Komins, Arin Komins, John O'Neill, Josh Dinges, Erik Mona, Rich Warren

Black Gate contributor and S&S author Greg Mele, see here with the spirit of Bob Byrne (who may or may not have been present)

Hotel restaurant Harry Caray's: Left to right:

Van Allen Plexico, Greg Mele, Scarlet, John O'Neill, Dave Ritzlin, Joe Bonadonna, Seth Lindberg, Steven Silver, David C Smith

Van Allen, pulp writer, Black Gate contributor, and friend of Andy Fix

Dave Ritzlin of DMR books

Hanging out with the esteemed Joe Bonadonna, one of my best friends, co-author, and Dyscrasia Fiction fan!

David C Smoth signing books for me

Randy Broecker, artist of lots of cosmic horror, including Tales From the Magician's Skull ( pictured here with a Shinatro Oba piece for C.L Werner.

Joshua Dinges, Erik Mona's consigliere

Black Gate chief editor John O'Neill

Todd Warren, collector of Pulp Fiction artifacts such as Clark Ashton Smith original art

Arin and Rich encouraged me to snag a 1987 copy of the first Arkham Horror Board game

 

Dark Muse News: Horrific Art – Interviewing Tim Waggoner

 Simulcast on Black Gate: Dark Muse News: Horrific Art – Interviewing Tim Waggoner

This Dark Muse News column continues its coverage of Beauty in Weird Fiction/Art via interviews (a series that began in 2014 on my author blog and was taken up by Black Gate in 2018). We’ve hosted authors such as Carol Berg, Anna Smith Spark, Darrell Schweitzer, CSE Cooney, Scott Oden, CS Friedman,  Bryn Hammond…. and many more… the latest being  Waclaw Traier.

Now we corner author Tim Waggoner, who has published over sixty novels and eight collections of short stories. He’s a four-time winner of the Bram Stoker Award, a two-time winner of the Scribe Award, and he’s been a finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award and the Splatterpunk Award. He’s also a full-time tenured professor who teaches creative writing and composition at Sinclair College in Dayton, Ohio.

Waggoner has been getting a lot of press, and an award, for his novelization of the Terrifier movies that feature the serial killer named Art. You'll learn more about that in this interview. Check out the juxtaposition of Art (the Terrifier on the Left, for clarity) and Tim Waggoner (innocent author on the Right). What wonderful hats they have!

Dark Muse News: New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine, Issues #8, 9, & 10

Simulcast on Black Gate.com

Dark Muse News: New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine, Issues #8, 9, & 10

 Cover Artists Cover #8 - Jimmy Makepeace  Cover #9 - Plastiboo  Cover #10 - Matej Kollár

Black Gate has been tracking the inception and growth of New Edge Sword & Sorcery (NESS) mgazine, 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 Greg 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 then in 2025 we covered NESS‘s publication of a NEW Jirel of Joiry tale! (2025) and we interviewed one of their key New Edge authors, Bryn Hammond.

Now in 2026, NESS brings us more with promises of Issues 8, 9, and 10!

The campaign to fund and expand them ends just days after this posting (March 14^th )!  Hurry now to Backerkit to get some exclusives like a poster featuring live models in full S&S costume, discounted back issues, and a cover art postcard; also, backing unlocks more interior art and bumps author payments. If you miss out, or want some of the prior rewards from previous crowdfunding, get back issues and other NESS offerings in their shop, noting that print copies often have limited print runs.

So what is in the next three issues? We asked Oliver Brackenbury that, and his answer is below. And we had a feeling Jirel of Joiry would return, and we asked Molly Tanzer to provide a bit of perspective on the heroine.

Dark Muse News: Sword & Sorcery Chain Story (#14-#18)

 Simulcast on Blackgate.com: Dark Muse News: Sword & Sorcery Chain Story (#14-#18)

In August 2025, we hailed the emergence of a second Chain Story project championed by Michael A. Stackpole. This is a Sword & Sorcery-focused, contagious set of connected (“chained”) stories. Each is:

• A standalone tale
• Readable in any order
• Free to read
• Interconnected via a theme involving a Crown

Stories are being released every few weeks. We'll round up groups, but check the Chain Story website. for the latest. In this post we highlight the latest set of five, Episodes 14-18:

• 14 Blight by Katherine Monasterio
• 15  In The Land of the Giants, by Bryan Young (second in the series via the chain!))
• 16 Demonfire: A Tale of Shintaro Oba by C. L. Werner
• 17 Terror Above Icehenge by Malcolm T. North
• 18 The Sapphire and the Sorceress by Bryan Young (third in the series via the chain!)

Dark Muse News: Reviewing Conan – Spawn of the Serpent God by Tim Waggoner

Simulcast on Black Gate:  Dark Muse News: Reviewing Conan – Spawn of the Serpent God by Tim Waggoner

Conan: Spawn of the Serpent God by Tim Waggoner (Titan Books, October 28, 2025). Cover artist unknown

Titan Books is on a roll, publishing Conan novels in quick succession: S. M. Stirling's Blood of the Serpent (2022), John C. Hocking's City of the Dead (2024), James Lovegrove's Cult of the Obsidian Moon (2024), Tim Lebbon's Songs of the Slain (2025), and Tim Waggoner's Spawn of the Serpent God (2025).  And their 2026 schedule promises more with John Langan's The Brides of Crom.

Here we delve into Tim Waggoner's Spawn of the Serpent God. He's a Bram Stoker Award-winning author known for horror and media tie-in fiction. Recently, he was honored for his Terrifier #2: The Official Movie Novelization with a Scribe Award for Best Adapted Novel from the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers. With approval from movie writer and director Damien Leone, Waggoner had doubled the size of the hack-and-slash script by adding lore and characterization (I plan to interview Tim Waggoner about this for Black Gate's Beauty in Weird/Horror series). Anyway, Waggoner's knack for tie-ins and deepening characters is demonstrated again in Conan: Spawn of the Serpentas he highlights the dangers of Zamora.

Dark Muse News: Anna Smith Spark’s A Sword of Bronze and Ashes

 Simulcast on Blackgate.com:
Dark Muse News: Anna Smith Spark’s A Sword of Bronze and Ashes

A Sword of Bronze and Ashes, September 12, 2023, FLAME TREE PRESS (Cover illustration by Broci)

Welcome to more Dark Muse News. This post reviews Anna Smith Spark's A Sword of Bronze and Ashes. It was released in September 2023 (Flame Tree Press, cover illustration by Broci) and is the first book of the series The Making of This World: Ruined. The sequel, A Sword of Gold and Ruin, was recently published in October, 2025.

Anna Smith Spark is known as the Queen of Grimdark, a moniker she acquired with her Empires of Dust series. You can expect the same poetic brutality here.  Her style and approach are very unique but are reminiscent of Tanith Lee. Literary wording may keep you distanced as a reader, but the raw emotion expressed throughout is so real that it makes the fantasy feel real, too.  We interviewed Anna Smith Spark in 2019 - Disgust and Desire as part of our Beauty in Weird Fiction series, where she revealed all sorts of muses and inspirations. That year, we hosted a Q&A Session at Gen Con; there, she, John O'Neill, and I showed off our footwear (link); Anna's footwear won hands down!

Dark Muse News: Affirmations and Exploits of a 50+ Year Old Miniature Gamer

 Simulcast on Black Gate: Dark Muse News: Affirmations and Exploits of a 50+ Year Old Miniature Gamer

 Warhammer Quest: Dark Water

For this round of Dark Muse News, we'll be seeking affirmations.

I'm older than the typical kid who plays with toy-soldier figurines (well, I'm over 50) and love to play with plastic figurines. If you are like me, and need affirmations on occasion that it is okay to be a kid still (and perhaps even okay to spend a load of hobby money on boutique board games), then this post is for you.  We'll highlight H.G. Wells, Peter Cushing, and delve into preparing for Warhammer Quest: Darkwater. This confesses my obsession with miniature board games that include miniatures; my collection includes shelves of asylum horror crawlers [yes, it's a whole subgenre, and this blog will cover them] and traditional dungeon crawlers. The post overviews the evolution of some dungeon crawlers.