A Fanzine For S&S Fans
RAGE m a c h i n e Books is starting a little project called Sword’s Forge. It’s a Sword & Sorcery fanzine of sorts (Epic Fantasy, heroic fantasy, Dark Fantasy and AD&D adjacent may occasionally work too, but this is an S&S mag). Why Sword’s Forge? Because that’s where all the creating happens. In the forge, where it’s dark and dirty and kinda sweaty. But great and terrible things begin there. Sword’s Forge will sell for $5 US on Amazon and its contents will be entirely stuff people want to submit for free. (Copyright remains with the creator.) The intention is promotion. Contributors will get a PDF copy and an ad for any new books they want to tell us about.
Want We Want
We aren’t looking for Sword & Sorcery novels, or even stories of any great length. It’s all the other stuff like articles or reviews, interviews, group discussions, cartoons, comics, artwork, letters of comment. We want to see your creative processes. It’s meant to be fun like an old fashioned fanzine (but much more legible. No purple Gestetner here. It will be a professional looking zine with tons of art.) If you need ideas, go here.
We have a Flash Fiction challenge. Write a cohesive S&S tale in under 1500 words. (I wouldn’t ask you to try if I hadn’t myself. I came up with “City of Ice” at 1504 words, so I need to trim 4 words, I guess. But it can be done. You can judge just how “cohesive” it is, I guess. I think I nailed it.)
Reprints and Authors’ Copies (and Ads)
Reprints are OK if they are obscure and the first publication is acknowledged. Authors will get a digital PDF copy of the zine as well as an ad to place at the end of the piece, along with book cover, bio and links. (This is a promotional zine.) These will act as end points for each piece, rather than a catalogue of ads at the back that get ignored.
Copyright
Please avoid any copyrighted characters. Even in a parody. Amazon has some pretty specific rules and we don’t want to have our entire bookstore wiped off the Internet. Fanzines traditionally didn’t have to worry about this but when you are make ten copies on an old photocopier, nobody cared. When it’s worldwide…
Comics
Also a note about comics. The size of the mag is 6X9 which is small for comics. We will either have to re-paginate your stuff (which and look pretty weird) or keep it in mind when you draw. Single panels running up and own work best.
Cheap As Possible…Plus!
Keeping the price down to the bare minimum is another thing we wanted. This should be an accessible zine. That $5 price for a 100 page magazine breaks down to about $3.50 for costs plus $1.50 towards a pot of cash to pay one author SFWA rates (8 cents a word) for an occasional 4000 word tale. (This is by request. No slush pile. None of the RAGE m a c h i n e crew will be eligible. RAGE m a c h i n e makes no direct profit from the zine, only promotional opportunities like everyone else.) Who would you like to see a new story from?
Thoughts? New ideas are always welcome. I look forward to hearing from you. Send submissions to darkworldsquarterly@gmail.com
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