A gang steals a dangerous designer drug in a bid to control the streets of New Old Philly, a demonically-possessed warrior battles hellspawn in a post-cataclysmic world, and a victim of the inevitable zombie apocalypse writes a final letter to his ex-wife. Seems the gods of genre have blessed me with a perfect trifecta of science fiction, fantasy, and horror appearances in the last few months — and so I must do their dark bidding and spread the word through the interwebs.

First up is the UK’s Murky Depths, a richly illustrated quarterly with an edgy and contemporary aesthetic. Murky Depths lucky number thirteen just rolled off the presses, containing my cyberpunkish piece ‘Named in Blood,’ awesomely illustrated by Paul Drummond. This is another story where I have fun with first person voice, and play around with some near future slang. Marks my third appearance in Murky Depths, and you can read about the others here and here.

That re-jigged disposey deck I had back in the days we were on the rise was long replaced by a sweet interlaced Kuztom Sliik that had me data-jacked in style, and I had ’grams enough to wiggle through most gaps in the system. Now, I’m no expert, but I had long since figured out that nothing stays secret for long once it’s networked . . . and what that means is you don’t have to be the guy that can beat the source security to get your peek, you just have to be the one that can beat the guy who did. Usually that’s some Mad Hack running the Shit Impenetrable, and you might as well try to sneak a peek at God’s balls as to get through their codes, but sometimes you get lucky enough to find premium data in the hands of those who can’t protect it. And sometimes you’ve got a backdoor.

And of course Jason Waltz’s Rogue Blade’s Entertainment keeps on rolling like the S&S juggernaut it is, having just launched a new anthology — the first in a new series — Demons: A Clash of Steel. For those of you that remember a trio of fantasy anthos from Carnifex press entitled Clash of Steel, RBE’s latest issue is a resurrection and enlargement of that line. Clash of Steel anthologies are denoted by black covers, and aim for more raw action and heroic fantasy badassery. I never appeared in any of original the Carnifex anthologies, my story for Demons, ‘By Hellish Means,’ being part of the fresh crop of pieces added to the book. It’s the story of the last days of a world overrun by the denizens of hell, where the only hope for human survival lies in the actions of a warrior-woman possessed by an ancient enemy.

Yrisa vaulted the last step, arriving at a landing and the temple’s colonnaded entrance. She spun to confront her pursuers; blade held easily before her, limbs poised in readiness as she had been taught. The first of the shadowy beasts to lope to the top of the stair was the one she had maimed, a demon driven mad with rage. She dispatched it quickly, plunging the dwimmerblade hilt-deep into its chest and ripping outward as the thing’s body dissolved into hissing mist. The remaining three were more careful, and looked at her now with keen appraisal. No mortal could have done what she just had, and some measure of comprehension dawned on the demons. They checked their headlong, rolling charge and instead advanced in cautious unison.

She felt the stirring within her that battle always engendered, the force she could not allow to the surface, that thing to which she was wedded. She was the last of her order on this overrun world, this Hell on earth, and she had only survived because the stolen power within her was greater than that of any Bride who had ever dared tryst with the sons of Hell.

To fight Hell, Mother Superior had said, one must use hellish means.

The shadeforms tore heavy paving stones from the stair and flung them at Yrisa, before clattering up the escarpment in a unified assault. The dwimmerblade blurred before her in defense, gonging a rich bass note with each deflected rock, and Yrisa sang her own song, sweet and high, a song of ritual battles and warrior-women, of sacrifice and of death. The demons closed upon her –

– and were blown back into the stuff of smoke and night with three swift strokes of the enchanted weapon.

Alone, atop the temple steps, with the tomb-hush of night settled upon the lands and the last knife-edge of red in the west to illuminate the world, Yrisa looked out over the dead city of Arghoz Lok that sprawled ruinously beneath her and wept.

To round things up with a bit of horror is a flash fiction story in the form of a letter in the Letters From the Dead anthology from The Library of the Living Dead Press. Edited by Mark M. Johnson, Letters From the Dead picks up on the notion of all those letters to loved ones, journal entries, missed meetings, and final goodbyes that form the epistolary detritus of a world being rapidly devoured by the living dead, and celebrates it with a collection of just that sort of thing. My own story (”document number twenty”) is about a bitter man who finds a second lease on life in the midst of the chaos — and a new talent for violence — but the old ghost of his failed marriage continues to warp his thoughts even as the end of the world, in the form of an undead horde, liberated him from his former self.

It was as if my whole life had led up to this moment. Dad and all his hunting trips and visits to the firing range, me in tow. My love of history, King Arthur, the Crusades, and World War II, remember? “We know who won,” you said, “why sit and read endlessly about a war fifty years done?” The weight lifting you said made me look like an oaf, the running, and even the landscaping job I took after the divorce. And those horrible movies, of course, my favorites. “People coming back from the dead is a stupid idea.” You said that and I remember.

How could anyone have known?

I am a new man. I have saved lives, meted out justice, done things you could never imagine. The rules are different — the world is different. If you could have seen me, a modern-day Grail Knight armed with Mossberg and Sig and chrome-plated hatchet. I did all of it for you, carved a path sixty miles to your doorstep, to the home we once shared.

And you were not here.

Now, given that one day apes will rule over us and hunt us for sport, I think the best course of action would be for everyone out there within blogshot to buy a copy of each of these sterling publications so that we can enjoy them while we have the wit and skill to do so. The gorillas and their nets are just around the corner, and there’s just no betting on a Cornelius or Zira to save our asses. So read, drink and be merry for tomorrow an orangutan just might be lobotomizing you to better accord with his notions of science and religion. Just saying.

So, what did I bring back from this year’s D-con? A bad cold, for starts. But also some Gene Wolfe books signed in person by the Maestro himself, some dirt-cheap graphic novels, and a few other assorted textual tidbits. Of course, there are also some pictures (of which, I’m ashamed to say, I took far too few), some new contacts and friends, and some great memories — whether they be giddy, foggy, manic, or just plain surreal, I certainly seem to have gained more than four days worth of neurological data. Indeed, I may still be processing it all . . .

So, no full con report — I was too busy enjoying myself to much bother with notes and pictures and all that. Add in the fact that my hotel (and free wifi) was a mile and a half away and you can perhaps see why it wasn’t convenient. Besides there are better places for that, and I’m amazed at how speedily and thoroughly some of the people I met at the con got their reports up. I can only conclude they went to bed earlier than I did.

I spent a good amount of my days paling around with Jason Waltz of Rogue Blades Entertainment and attending various panels, mostly in the writing track. The panels were, on the whole, excellent, and attendance seemed to be up from last year. The highlight of my trip was meeting Gene Wolfe (who sometimes goes by the name of Greatest Writer of All Time), and getting a picture with him. Wolfe is an enormously engaging speaker, at turns hilarious and endearing, and, as Jason said, somebody ought to bring out a DVD of him recollecting his various anecdotes and stories.

But I didn’t spend all my time doing the serious stuff, either. For at D-con are late night horror films and pulsating live music well into the wee hours, opportunities to cavort with superheroes and mingle with monsters — plenty to keep you busy around the clock. Everyone at Dragon*Con seemed to be having a blast regardless of their particular interests — the place is something like a melting pot of geekdom, where book people and movie people and game people and costume people and people who may indeed not even be people at all interact as if there weren’t any barriers between them. It’s a nice vibe, and a fun time.

I may put some more pics up when I’ve unpacked my camera but, for now, here is me meeting Gene Wolfe:

Over at The Cimmerian — a website devoted to pulp and heroic fantasy of both the new and time-tested varieties — Deuce Richardson has just posted a great review of Rage of the Behemoth.

Of my own contribution to the anthology, ‘The Wolf of Winter,’ he had this to say:

Bill Ward delivers the grim and gritty goods once again in this anthology, just as he did in The Return of the Sword, with “The Wolf of Winter.” Ward’s red-handed protagonist, Krhanik Black Heart, is akin to London’s Tostig Lodbrog and Howard’s Asgrimm, only even more ruthless and writ larger. One of the best stories in this collection.

Clearly a reviewer of refined tastes and perspicacious insight!

Currently there is a promotional deal for Behemoth over at the Rogue Blades Entertainment site — meaning now may be the best time to get your hands on it.

Rogue Blades Entertainment has just released its second anthology, and it’s a doozy. Three hundred plus pages of secondary world fantasy with a pulse, featuring stories in the classic Heroic Fantasy and Sword & Sorcery vein — but with a modern twist. Rage of the Behemoth’s overarching theme of heroes battling colossal creatures is further divided into sections based on location, such as jungles, mountains, or oceans. This gives the stories in the anthology a very strong cohesive quality, and setting becomes as much a character as the giant beasts and demons that stride across Behemoth’s pages.

And those beasts are a startling array of the familiar, the bizarre, and the completely original. There are dragons and dragon turtles, frost hydras, griffins, manticores, giant animated skeletons, warped sea monsters, and even a few beast gods. Stories range from straight adventure, to more introspective and metaphorical pieces, and Jason Waltz has again done an excellent job in not only selecting a variety of tales, but arranging them for effect.

Those familiar with RBE’s previous anthology, Return of the Sword, will recognize some of the names in this one (including my own). Behemoth also features established authors whose names you may recognize such as Andrew J. Offut & Richard K. Lyon, C.L. Werner, Lois Tilton, Brian Ruckley, and Mary Rosenblum. Fantastic interior and cover art from Didier Norman and RBE regular Johnny Perkins really complements the action — and these artists have worked to create five beautiful limited edition covers (one for each terrain section in the book).

If you are a fan of adventure fantasy, or just secondary world fiction in general, you have no lack of choice when it comes to novels. But anthologies that celebrate such themes have become a rare thing indeed since the glory days of Flashing Swords and Thieves World. RBE is doing something about that, and they’re doing it with scope and vision enough to ensure that this present resurgence in Sword & Sorcery represents the best of classic themes told with modern voices.

Have a look at the Rogue Blades Entertainment site for information on special deals on all their books, including a ’shout out’ campaign for Behemoth that offers rebates to every buyer that helps spread the word about the anthology.

Prolific online reviewer John Ottinger of Grasping for the Wind has just posted an early review of Rogue Blade’s forthcoming Rage of the Behemoth anthology, the follow up to 2008’s Return of the Sword. Behemoth has a more focused theme than Sword, as it deals specifically with the confrontation between man and large, powerful, fantastical beasts, with each story furthermore belonging to a section based on setting (desert, jungle, ocean, frozen wastes, mountains). From John’s review:

Although at first glance, it seems that with such a singular theme, the stories would simply be repetitious in content, the authors chosen have managed to broaden the man versus monster theme and give it more depth. Rage of the Behemoth takes the best of Robert E. Howard and revitalizes it for the twenty-first century.

Nice words indeed, paricularly that quaotable and sound-bite friendly closing line. But, of course, I’m not going to stop there, since my own story ‘The Wolf of Winter’ recieved a great review from John:

Bill Ward writes a tale in “Wolf in Winter” where the monster the protagonist faces is as much himself as it is a physical being. Ward’s story of death, renewal, and the beast inside each person is one of the best of the anthology, and turns an apparent sword and sorcery tale into something quite a bit deeper. Worthy reading.

Stuff like that just makes my day.

Sages & Swords, the 2005 follow-up to Lords of Swords, is an example of just how fine a small press anthology can be. If I didn’t already have my copy, the latest special offer from Rogue Blades Entertainment would have me jumping out of my gym shorts to get it. Follow this link and you’ll see what I mean.

Lords of Swords and Sages & Swords were both edited by Daniel E. Blackston, and published by the sadly defunct Pitch-Black Books, the originators of Flashing Swords ezine. Lords has sold out, last I heard; but Jason at RBE has lucked into some copies of Sages which, truth be told, was my favorite of the two. Firstly, the Storn Cook cover is a thing of beauty, and that alone would have had me halfway to the cash register if I had found it in a book store.

But check out the names in it. Tanith Lee, Eugie Foster, Michael Boatmen, Vera Nazarian . . . Harold Lamb! There’s a Dabir and Asim tale from Howard Andrew Jones, a smooth-as-butter actioner from Sean T. M. Stiennon, and the great, much talked about piece from Barbara Tarbox, ‘Detour at Abbinford.’ My favorite story is probably Robert J. Santa’s ‘Game of the Krillihitchkin,’ in which a dragon-hunting sorcerer and the beast itself square off in a battle of wits. Every story in Sages is a winner, covering a gamut of adventure fantasy fiction from the suspenseful to the sublime.

And it has some great, writer-oriented non-fiction as well. There’s an interview with R.A. Salvatore of Drizzt fame, an article on the necessity of realism in fantasy fiction by Edward J. McFadden III, and Daniel E. Blackston’s own great primer for beginning writers ‘How to Break Into Fantasy Fiction.’ Couple all that with a book that looks and feels like the highest quality, from the texture of the pages to the iconic interior illustrations, and you have a modern classic.

And RBE has the remaing stock and is selling them at more than a third off the cover price. They’re also running a deal on the first printing of Return of the Sword. Both deals are worth checking out — you can thank me later.

Sages & Swords and Return of the Sword at Rogue Blades Entertainment

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.