Psst! Wanna buy some fiction?

Well look what's gone and snuck up on me--the Kings of the Night III anthology, which contains my short story "Simultas," is now available from Fictionwise. It's a sword-and-sorcery anthology, with lots of buckling of swashes and the like. My story, set in a kind of alternate reality, post-Arthurian world, doesn't entirely conform to the traditional conventions of that sub-genre. The battles being fought are more intimate, the stakes personal. I read the piece at Armadillocon last weekend to a dozen or so folks who turned out (Armadillocon is great for readings) and the response was enthusiastic. So we'll see if that vote of confidence translates into tens, if not dozens, of sales.

What I have noticed as I edit these books is that there are still plenty of good writers creating great stories in the sword and sorcery mode despite the almost total absence of such magazines or anthologies to support them. This lack of venues surprises me for if people are writing them, I suspect, people want to read them too. Writers are readers after all. But unlike a writer's manual, sword & sorcery appeals to a much wider audience.

Why has S&S publishing fallen off since the 1970s? There could a number of causes. 1) the scores of bad S&S films between 1980-1990, 2) the plethora of shared world collections, 3) many S&S writers are still creating what they used to but the publishers have marketed them as something else, 4) AD&D and other role-playing games filled a portion of the market with game-related fiction, 5) the proliferation of "humorous" fantasy that turned the wheels of fantasy to a new, lighter purpose. But I think the number one reason was the "fad"-style of promotion publishers began around 1967 that left a bad taste in many reader's mouths. Paperback houses cranked out Conan-copies until the short renaissance collapsed in on itself. What might have been a growing and interesting sub-market became a weird relation that nobody wanted visiting anymore.

Editor Gary Thomas makes some good points in his introduction, excerpted above. The last point he makes, I suspect, is the strongest. Like any horse, if it's ridden too hard and not treated with respect, it's going to up and die on you. Many people--readers, authors, editors--viewed the myriad bad Conan knock-offs as the pinnacle of the form, rather than the dregs. The same effect plagued space opera and Tolkienesque high fantasy at different times to varying degrees. Will sword and sorcery make a comeback? Sure. Everything is cyclical. But it is interesting that the form has remained dormant as a viable market for so long.

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