1. For those not familiar with you or New Edge, please introduce yourself and the magazine.
My name is Oliver Brackenbury, a Canadian author, podcaster, and screenwriter with a deep love of Sword & Sorcery. Recently I've also become an editor and publisher.
New Edge Sword & Sorcery is an illustrated short fiction and non-fiction magazine featuring original stories, interviews, reviews, and articles all centered on the titular genre. Our motto is "Made with love for the classics, and an inclusive, boundary-pushing approach to storytelling!"
"Made with love for the classics..." means we care deeply about letting readers know what makes classic S&S characters & creators worth exploring. In just two years we've been blessed with the latest Elric story by Michael Moorcock, are on track to publish the first Jirel of Joiry story in 85 years, and have or will soon publish numerous articles introducing new readers to notable figures from the S&S canon like C.L. Moore, Charles Saunders, and Cele Goldsmith Lali.
"...an inclusive, boundary-pushing approach to storytelling!" means we're working hard contributing to there being a broader swath of humanity on the page, behind the keyboard, and in the fandom. We're also hungry to see how we can expand the possibilities of what S&S can do (themes, story structures, prose styles...) while still being clearly recognizable as itself.
Judging by how things have gone so far, people like the results of our efforts!
Barely past our two year anniversary, we have expanded into publishing under the name "Brackenbury Books", and are currently crowdfunding our second book, "Double-Edged Sword & Sorcery", a pair of Mongol-inspired S&S novellas bound in a single paperback akin to the classic Ace Double line.
In short, because it's a fascinating culture & period of history, Asian set S&S is almost always rooted in Chinese or Japanese historical inspiration, and because it allowed me to pair two authors I love in one book, writing characters I'd seen people react strongly to in our magazine, each exploring basically the same setting in their own unique way.
In detail, it was an organic product of how the magazine began, and grew into book publishing.
The magazine started with a sweat equity prototype issue #0, available free in digital and priced at cost in soft/hardcover, and the table of contents was drawn almost entirely from a single online community where a bunch of us had strong feelings about how to take Sword & Sorcery into the future.
This included two authors who set their stories in Mongol-rooted settings yet write with totally unique voices: Bryn Hammond writes the nomad Goatskin having adventures in a more fantastic version of our world, while Dariel R.A. Quiogue writes the deposed warlord Orhan the Snow Leopard's adventures in a secondary world heavily rooted in the same setting & time period - that of Genghis Khan.
Bryn is a respected, published scholar of historical non-fiction about that period, while Dariel is an amateur student of the era with over ten years experience writing fiction set in it. Bryn writes in a awe-inspiring, poetic, Weird-with-a-capital-"W" style, while Dariel specializes in pulse-pounding stories that astound with their action. Both can bring the full spectrum of Sword & Sorcery to a tale, but those are some of their specialties.
As part of the crowdfund we actually did a short story panel discussion livestream where we analyzed one Goatskin and one Orhan story, getting deep into what makes them worth reading.
But yes, having organically lucked into working with two knowledgeable, skilled authors - and great people - writing with complementary voices in a similar setting, Mongol S&S made perfect sense to me for this pairing of novellas.
Bryn is a respected, published scholar of historical non-fiction about that period, while Dariel is an amateur student of the era with over ten years experience writing fiction set in it. Bryn writes in a awe-inspiring, poetic, Weird-with-a-capital-"W" style, while Dariel specializes in pulse-pounding stories that astound with their action. Both can bring the full spectrum of Sword & Sorcery to a tale, but those are some of their specialties.
As part of the crowdfund we actually did a short story panel discussion livestream where we analyzed one Goatskin and one Orhan story, getting deep into what makes them worth reading.
But yes, having organically lucked into working with two knowledgeable, skilled authors - and great people - writing with complementary voices in a similar setting, Mongol S&S made perfect sense to me for this pairing of novellas.
3) I find that interesting, that you have both a fantasy novella, and a historical fantasy novella, and yet both are sword and sorcery. While sword and sorcery goes classically well with fantasy, what do you think the advantages, challenges and opportunities are for sword and sorcery as a genre to tackle more historical fantasy settings and characters?
I'd agree there's that degree of realism, even when the story is set in a secondary world with giant snakes, sorcery, etc., and since historical adventure was pretty much a co-parent of S&S, it's always worth considering when reading, writing, or reviewing it. But yes, your question!
I think the advantages include inspiration, grounding the story so that the fantastic elements really shine by contrast when they show up, and providing a foundation for your worldbuilding that will help make the setting consistent even if most of that foundation remains below the surface.
The main challenge is, of course, if you really wed your story to historical fact then you may set yourself up for nitpicking; Lovecraft famously advised Fritz Leiber to invent that most influential Fantasy city, Lankhmar, rather then set his Fafhrd & Grey Mouser stories in ancient Alexandria, specifically to avoid getting picked apart by the history nerds. You may also end up being very rigid with yourself, denying your story the ability to go where the narrative would be best suited on account of needing to do something ahistorical to facilitate it.
But I think it's worth it, even if you're fantastic elements are really out there, to consider more historical settings and characters when writing Sword & Sorcery. It gives you the opportunity to justify spending time on all kinds of fun research, to use the fantastic elements to draw in readers who otherwise might not learn the historical details you're including with them, to highlight peoples of historical periods who are often neglected (Bryn Hammond is particularly keen on doing so, which works great in tandem with the subgenre's history of outsider protagonists), make historical subtext brightly legible Fantasy text, and so much more.
With doorstopper thick, trilogy-or-more high fantasy series the standard right now, Sword & Sorcery can be a refreshing break with its shorter, fast paced, more episodic storytelling. Its more inferred worldbuilding and soft or entirely absent magic systems can provide a breath of fresh air from over-explained settings that so often render the fantastic mundane. Meanwhile, a focus on grounded, outsider heroes just trying to survive a dangerous world can be more relatable than chasing chosen ones around on world-saving quests. And so on.
That said, it may grow in other ways to follow, not buck, publishing trends in the broader SFF sphere. For example, if we get to make our Double-Edge Sword & Sorcery book, the two novellas it contains will become Vol. 1 in what I hope will be only the first of several S&S novella series that we'll publish in the future. In that way S&S will be moving closer to the trend in SFF novellas that Tor has been the main driver behind in recent years.
5) Talking about trends in fantasy, and readership, what ideas do you have for introducing fantasy readers who think S&S is only Conan and bring them to see the potential of reading works such as Bryn and Daniel's?
We also do our own regular short story panel discussion livestreams (here's a playlist) that focus on contemporary Sword & Sorcery tales from a variety of publications, with an eye to showing off the wide range of possibilities. For example we covered "Dara's Tale", by Mark Rigney, to show what S&S can look like with an adolescent protagonist in a story with some overlap with fairy tale tropes.
Naturally there's our magazine, New Edge Sword & Sorcery, which not only features a variety of stories where we aim to show off the full breadth of Sword & Sorcery, there's also non-fiction articles, historical profiles, interviews, and book reviews that help spread fun & interesting knowledge about what S&S can do. My note to our non-fiction authors is always to try and get people excited about the present & future fo the genre, not just the past, when they write pieces like Jon Olfert's article on neurodivergence in S&S, Nathaniel Web's upcoming piece on Heavy Metal's relationship to S&S, or even pieces on past figures because hey if this 20th century author could do X in the genre then what could be done to build on that?
And, honestly, crowdfunds are a great way to get the word out - especially if you make them a kind of community event to take part in, not just a chance to pre-order something. We do our best, mainly through livestreams that have included interviews, panel discussions, TTRPG sessions, and even live music as a way of drawing people in to find out what this S&S thing is all about!
There's always more I could say on this, but that feels like a good answer for now.
Well, the campaign ends at noon EST on Saturday, October 19th so you'll want to back it before then!
Some fun items I haven't mentioned yet include...
- The physical editions are traditionally printed, with the softcover a classic mass-market paperback, and there's a very limited run hardcover of the same dimensions that sports a nice bookmark ribbon. We love the Book As Object and do our best to produce a high quality product.
- There's a crowdfund exclusive bonus short story and, if we hit 300 backers, that will have poetry added to it! Both tie into the novellas, but are not mandatory to enjoy or understand them.
- Other crowdfund exclusives include a bookmark with art from each cover on either side, battle-axe logo stickers, signed author bookplates, and more.
- Our crowdfunds are also the best time to buy New Edge Sword & Sorcery back issues, which we discount only when providing them as Add-Ons for backer pledges.
- We aim to have a Final Friday "Telethon" livestream this Friday at 7pm EST! You can watch it right on the crowdfund page, where the trailer sits at the top. Past crowdfund's Final Friday livestreams have featured TTRPG live play sessions, live music, interviews, and other fun treats; I won't spoil what we have coming for this one!
Our authors can tell you plenty about themselves in the recordings of their recent livestream interviews, so I'll let them speak for themselves.
As for New Edge / Brackenbury Books? As I write this we're a mere $225 from hitting 100% funding on this book and we'd love for you to help take us soaring past that point! We're excited to make the book, naturally, and this crowdfund succeeding will put us in a great place for continuing to produce high quality publications featuring titanic tales paired with awesome art, all coming to you from a diverse array of talented creators.
So go on, check it out!
Thank you so much, Oliver!
As for New Edge / Brackenbury Books? As I write this we're a mere $225 from hitting 100% funding on this book and we'd love for you to help take us soaring past that point! We're excited to make the book, naturally, and this crowdfund succeeding will put us in a great place for continuing to produce high quality publications featuring titanic tales paired with awesome art, all coming to you from a diverse array of talented creators.
So go on, check it out!
Thank you so much, Oliver!
