Jason Waltz has just announced the release of the second edition of Return of the Sword over on his blog, and at the Rogue Blades Entertainment site. As most of you know, Return of the Sword, an anthology of heroic and edgy fantasy adventure fiction featuring the likes of James Enge, E.E. Knight, Michael Ehart, Nathan Meyer, Angeline Hawkes, Bruce Durham, Steve Goble and other great names (such as mine), was originally published by Flashing Swords Press. But now Jason is doing his own thing, and the new edition better reflects his own vision, and has the RBE logo and a nice ‘Rogue Blades presents’ ascription to reflect that.

Same great content, but a subtly different new look, with a cover layout that establishes the RBE format that the rest of Jason’s anthologies will follow. So, if you want your Return of the Sword and Rage of the Behemoth to perfectly match on the shelf, you’ll want this second edition. Another addition is a few pages of quotes from the many positive reviews the book has received over the last half-year.

And for anyone that still hasn’t grabbed a copy . . . you’ve just run out of excuses.

Jason Waltz of Rogue Blades Entertainment is posting an interview series of all the authors of Return of the Sword — one author per week — up at the RBE Facebook page.

My own interview is up right now, and here it is.

In it I talk a bit about what motivates me as a writer, touch on the inspiration for my story ‘The Wyrd of War,’ as well as a great deal of pontificating and bloviating on subjects I’m only barely qualified to talk about. Consider it a multi-faceted entertainment, with some interesting questions from Mr. Waltz interspersed with my own demented ramblings.

Should be fun to read these every week and get each author’s take on the writing process and the changing nature of publishing.

Just back from Dragoncon and “Holy Crap!” doesn’t even begin to cover it. I’m still a bit footsore, a bit sleep-deprived, and a bit overwhelmed by it all — but what a fantastic experience. The Con was a massive convergence of all things sci-fi, fantastical, horrific, and just plain . . . other. Massive throngs of people slipping between four hotels in the heart of Atlanta, incredible costumes, great panels and programs and galleries, and tons and tons of dealers and exhibitors catering to nearly every urge, passion, enthusiasm, or addiction a genre fan might have — or concievabley develop.

It’s just as well I didn’t bring a camera, or attempt anything like a ‘Con Report,’ because I needed the whole four days just to wrap my head around the scale of the thing. Plus I was busy at the Roguelikefiction booth at the exhibitors hall helping my friend Nathan Jerpe sell his built-from-scratch computer RPG Legerdemain. Jason Waltz of Rogue Blades Entertainment made the long trip down to Atlanta with some copies of Return of the Sword, and we managed to get books in the hands of a lot of fans of Heroic Fantasy and Sword & Sorcery . . . until we sold out! I doubt if either of our roguish products could have sold any better if they had been literal hot cakes.

And I even got to play big shot and autograph some copies of Return of the Sword, an activity that makes for a great ego-boost for a solitary, ‘under-the-radar’ writer like me. Dragoncon was an absolute blast, I met a lot of great people with similar interests, and I’m already counting the days till next year.

Return of the Sword just got a great review over at BlackGate.com. Black Gate reviewer Ryan Harvey goes beyond simple summarization to get at the heart of the themes and story elements of the anthology’s nineteen tales, and he does a superb job of explaining to a genre-savvy reader just why he or she might want to give Return of the Sword a try.

Link to Ryan Harvey’s Black Gate review of Return of the Sword

And since my recent immunization against all forms of false modesty, I don’t mind quoting what Ryan had to say about my story:

Grand warfare is at the core of a number of the stories. Bill Ward’s “The Wyrd of War” abandons dialogue completely for a description of an enormous dark fantasy battle. It works as a prolonged prose-poem, and anyone wanting to immerse him or herself in feverish madness will get a thrill from Ward’s headlong action.

Return of the Sword just received a good review over at The Fix, a review site dedicated to genre fiction that looks at a lot of small press work. Reviewer Janice Clark, who acknowledges that sweaty heroics and clanging battles aren’t normally her preferred reading fare, seems genuinely impressed with the quality of the offering. I was really glad to see that she was able to make a connection with this sort of fiction when she realized that heroes can be driven by fears and weakness just like the rest of us — and as she says quite perceptively: “It’s not just about the fighting. It’s about overcoming.” It’s good to see Return of the Sword making that sort of impression on someone who isn’t normally a fan of the genre.

Review of The Return of the Sword at The Fix

And here’s a sample of what she said about my own contribution to the anthology, The Wyrd of War:

I liked the way the author remained tightly in Vendic’s point of view, drawing the reader intimately into the story. The descriptions of the battle and the twisted creatures fighting it add a strong note of reality. I was there, whether I wanted to be or not. . . . The surprise, for me, was the kick in the stomach I felt at the end, even though I half-expected it. Very well done. It gave me the shudders.

I couldn’t be any happier than to know something I wrote had that effect.

Offerings from Flashing Swords Press continue to score well at The Fix, and it’s a site well-worth checking out as it covers a broad array of short fiction venues from magazines to anthologies.

The Return of the Sword anthology is a rare thing in this day and age. I’m not talking about the passion that went into it, it being the work of a handful of dedicated people, Jason M. Waltz chief among them, who have labored without the resources of a big publisher on the risky proposition of publishing an anthology of short fiction. No, fortunately for readers of genre fiction such dedication is well represented in the small press — and is perhaps a prerequisite for running a ‘zine or small publishing house.

No, what makes it different is that it represents a kind of fiction that is, paradoxically, at once hugely popular and successful in the world of big novels and multi-book epics, while concurrently being all but ignored by short fiction periodicals or the anthologies of big publishers. Why should this be? Give this book to a fan of Martin, Jordan, Erikson, Bakker, Donaldson, or, dare I say it, Tolkien and I am certain it would be well received. The modern fantasy epic, after all, owes a great deal to the practitioners of heroic fantasy and sword and sorcery fiction in the short form.

But publishers of such work are few and far between. In a time when it has often been remarked that the short story is dying, short stories that actually adhere closely to a type of fiction that is eating up the bestseller lists can hardly be found, at any level. There was a time, far after the hey day of such stories in the pulps, that it was still possible to buy an anthology of fantasy tales at the local book store. Such shared world anthologies like Thieves World and Liavek, and collections such as the original Flashing Swords and Swords Against Darkness, kept the kind of storytelling you’ll see apparent in Return of the Sword alive, and provided a launching point or a chance to branch out for many a writer.

But what is the kind of thing you’ll find in Return of the Sword? Why is it unique? When the familiar themes and tropes of heroic fantasy are condensed into a short story one gets a distillation of the form, a tale that does the job of a larger story in terms of world-building and invention but in a concise, fast-paced package. These stories move, these stories are about something, these stories perform a juggling act that is too often not part of the modern short story writer’s toolkit, and do it in such a way that you never know it’s being done. These stories are examples of an almost-lost art form.

And for the stories themselves I was pleased to see such a variety, from personal stories to epics, tales of heroism juxtaposed with those of unvarnished, unsentimental survival. Intrigues and cynicism, dread weapons of soul-stealing power, warriors of uncommon virtue and commoners of unlikely character. You’ve got a lot of stories about dignity here, which I like, about aging and loss, about sacrifice of all kinds. About what duty means, and honor, and self-sacrifice.

But don’t take my word for it, some great reviews of the individual stories in the book can be found at the blogs of Bryan Hitchcock and Jeff Draper.

Or just go ahead and grab a copy, secure in the knowledge that you not only will be keeping alive a tradition of fantasy adventure fiction, but getting a collection of uncommonly good tales as well.