Saturday 31 July 2021

Submissions for Swords & Sorceries: Tales of Heroic Fantasy Volume 3 open till October 31st

 

 

Submissions for Swords & Sorceries Volume 3 will open on the 1st August and close on the 31st October 2021

Payment is £25 per story regardless of length, plus a contributor's copy. The book will be published as a paperback and ebook. If a hardcover version is published we will pay an additional £25. Contributors can also buy extra copies of the book through us at cost price. 

Please send your submissions as attachments (doc or docx) to:

paralleluniversepublications@gmx.co.uk

You can send in more than one submission, but we will not accept more than one story per writer.

Although we prefer original stories we are prepared to consider reprints. Just inform us where and when it was previously published. 

You can send in simultaneous submissions, but please let us know at once if your story is accepted elsewhere.

There is no limit on the size of submissions.  

All rejections and acceptances will be sent out by email at the end of the first week in November. Please don't enquire about your submission before then.

Your story should be sent as an attachment, headed:

 "Submission - Swords & Sorceries 3"

And good luck!

To get a better idea of the kind of stories we are likely to publish in this anthology check out volumes 1 & 2:

  

The contents of Volume One are:

THE MIRROR OF TORJAN SUL - Steve Lines

THE HORROR FROM THE STARS - Steve Dilks

TROLLS ARE DIFFERENT - Susan Murrie Macdonald

CHAIN OF COMMAND - Geoff Hart

DISRUPTION OF DESTINY - Gerri Leen

THE CITY OF SILENCE - Eric Ian Steele

RED - Chadwick Ginther

THE RECONSTRUCTED GOD - Adrian Cole

The cover and all the interior artwork is by Jim Pitts. 
 
amazon.co.uk

amazon.com


 
The contents of Volume 2 are:

The Essence of Dust by Mike Chinn

Highjacking the Lord of Light by Tais Teng

Out in the Wildlands by Martin Owton

Zale and Zedril by Susan Murrie Macdonald

The Amulet and the Shadow by Steve Dilks

Antediluvia: Seasons of the World by Andrew Darlington

A Thousand Words for Death by Pedro Iniguez

Stone Snake by Dev Agarwal

Seven Thrones by Phil Emery

The Eater of Gods by Adrian Cole 

Illustrations by Jim Pitts.

amazon.co.uk

amazon.com

Other than for Swords & Sorceries: Tales of Heroic Fantasy we are officially closed for submissions at the moment.

Tuesday 27 July 2021

Reminder: A Distasteful Horror Story by Johnny Mains will cease publication on July 31st


Just a reminder that we will be ending publication of Johnny Mains' A Distasteful Horror Story at the end of this month, so there are just 4 days in which to buy a copy of the paperback or ebook. 
 
"A darkly humorous, satirical look at the tight-knit world of horror writers - and their fans. Contains no scenes of violence against actual books, only their authors”

Johnny Mains has been prominent in the horror genre ever since his 2010 debut anthology, Back from the Dead: The Legacy of the Pan Book of Horror Stories, which won the British Fantasy Award in 2011 for best anthology. Mains has been at the forefront of the UK’s new wave of horror, editing Best British Horror (Salt Publishing and NewCon Press), Dead Funny: Horror Stories by Comedians (edited with Robin Ince), and The Screaming Book of Horror.Mains has also written several collections of his own stories: With Deepest Sympathy (2010), Frightfully Cosy and Mild Stories for Nervous Types (2012) and A Little Light Screaming (2015).Mains has also written the introduction to Stephen King’s 30th anniversary edition of Thinner, and has discovered ‘lost’ works of fiction by Algernon Blackwood, Edith Nesbit and Daphne Du Maurier.

Paperback and ebook (kindle):
 

 

Friday 23 July 2021

Swords & Sorceries: Tales of Heroic Fantasy Volume 3




 

Previously published by Parallel Universe Publications

  

The contents of Volume One are:

THE MIRROR OF TORJAN SUL - Steve Lines

THE HORROR FROM THE STARS - Steve Dilks

TROLLS ARE DIFFERENT - Susan Murrie Macdonald

CHAIN OF COMMAND - Geoff Hart

DISRUPTION OF DESTINY - Gerri Leen

THE CITY OF SILENCE - Eric Ian Steele

RED - Chadwick Ginther

THE RECONSTRUCTED GOD - Adrian Cole

The cover and all the interior artwork is by Jim Pitts. 
 
amazon.co.uk

amazon.com


 
The contents of Volume 2 are:

The Essence of Dust by Mike Chinn

Highjacking the Lord of Light by Tais Teng

Out in the Wildlands by Martin Owton

Zale and Zedril by Susan Murrie Macdonald

The Amulet and the Shadow by Steve Dilks

Antediluvia: Seasons of the World by Andrew Darlington

A Thousand Words for Death by Pedro Iniguez

Stone Snake by Dev Agarwal

Seven Thrones by Phil Emery

The Eater of Gods by Adrian Cole 

Illustrations by Jim Pitts.

amazon.co.uk

amazon.com




Thursday 22 July 2021

A detailed look at Swords & Sorceries: Tales of Heroic Fantasy Volume 2 by Andrew Darlington

A detailed look at Swords & Sorceries: Tales of Heroic Fantasy Volume 2 by contributor Andrew Darlington:

"Two moons. A wild and desolate landscape. A swordsman with an over-fondness for wine. Mike Chinn opens this evocative collection with some traditional elements, a sinister female mystic with a feline familiar, and gaunt fortress with supernatural secrets. In his 1987 study of fantastic sagas – ‘Wizards And Wild Romance’, Michael Moorcock observes that ‘epic fantasy can offer a world of metaphor in which to explore the rich, hidden territories deep within us.’ Not sure if that applies to “The Essence Of Dust”, but Mike Chinn’s tale does open out into the potential multiverse realms of the Internection where time and space melts into contradiction.

"Fantasy has deep story-telling roots that go all the way back to earliest human legends, myth-making and folk-tales of voyages into demon-haunted strangeness. It assumed a separate ‘Swords and Sorcery’ identity, different and distinct, around the time doomed Texan Robert E Howard unleashed the mighty-thewed Conan the Cimmerian for 1930s Pulp ‘Weird Tales’ editions, leading into Fritz Leiber who not only coined the term as a variant on the cheaply-produced Gladiatorial Sword-&-Sandals epic historical movies, but also spun the intriguing Fafhrd & The Gray Mouser tales. Clark Ashton Smith contributes ornate and elaborate fantasia of ‘The Empire Of The Necromancers’ in far-future Zothique, and L Sprague de Camp began anthologizing what he calls ‘a class of stories laid, not in the world as it is or was or will be, but as it ought to have been to make a good story.’ Until Moorcock’s brooding albino Elric of Melniboné adds his existential strife through the pages of ‘Science Fantasy’ magazine, all the wild way through to Sláine of ‘2000AD’ adventuring through warp-spasmed versions of Celtic myth in vivid art panels.  

"Although it has elements of Science Fiction, Swords & Sorcery is not bound by physical laws, and embraces all manner of outré magic alongside the generic brand of symbolic elusiveness that Moorcock’s essay identifies. Although beware magical elements, for they also have their own logics, and their trickster rules. As such, it’s a wide field for fictional invention. But, lest it descend into a leaden cliché of repetition, all genres and subgenres must evolve if that vitality is to remain. This new original anthology series from Parallel Universe Publications springs a host of new angles from a range of familiar and less-than familiar names, mixing in regulation heroic fantasy ingredients through the perception of a new generation of tale-spinners. Tais Teng – a Dutch SF writer and illustrator, uses an ‘inland sea’ that stretches from Jorsaleem to Baghdad as a location for twisting historical religions into new configurations, with skilled thief Esme Shadowkind, Shakan the Fleet and Hethor of Samarkand scheming to rewrite sacred text ‘Book Of Ormazd’ in a way that alters the world itself, using a bronze flying horse and a file of the prophet Zoroaster’s blood. Dev Agarwal’s “Stone Snake” uses a grimoire – not a ‘grey mare’, to liberate an entombed giantess in order to halt the evil resurgence of Dagon’s minions from an oceanic time before the human era.

"Also within pseudo-historical times there are ventures transgressing the secure boundaries of the Roman Empire into the barbarian horrors beyond in Martin Owton’s “Out In The Wildlands”, in a foray that such writers as Rosemary Sutcliff might initially have conjectured, albeit without the fiery demon confrontation. While Susan Murrie Macdonald – one of only three writers who also graces the first volume of this ongoing series, entrances with her Market storyteller regaling the beguilement of Azalea Swordmaid with her demon-born half-brother battling corpse-eating ghouls in the Cinader cemetery.

"Phil Emery’s “Seven Thrones” also succeeds because of the deceptive simplicity of its structure, a series of gladiatorial contests fought to the death by swordsman Zain and poet Kazen, for the decadent amusement of unseen watchers. ‘Magic, even dark magic, is somewhat akin to poetry.’ And it is, ‘the cadences of a blade, the flow of a quill.’

"Yet Steve Dilks’ sticks to what Jason Hardy terms ‘well-written Old School heroic fantasy in the Howard vein’ (on the ‘Echoes Of Valhalla’ website). His “The Amulet And The Shadow” displays all the genre’s timeless ingredients, the medieval assault-towers of the Lomantian Empire that batter the gates of Jadira could just as easily be the siege-engines of Troy or the Idylls of Arthurian legend, with outlaw slave Terach of Amrythia, who escapes through a visitation of eldritch sorcery and blasphemous enchantment in order to exact bloody revenge, only to discover an eternity of dark damnation in the denouement. Swords & Sorcery does not concern itself with social evolution. As an egalitarian in a democratic age, one wonders why the fictional need for a monarch? Must that always be a human cultural constant, if not King must it be Sovereign, Potentate, Tsar or Jeddak? Does its presence answer some Jungian archetype for natural hierarchy deep in the gut of the psych? If there is ever to be a New Wave of Swords & Sorcery it must surely deal with these regressive issues.

"Can a genre based in such antique precepts reinvent itself in new ways? There are powerful indications here that it can. Earlier formative collections such as L Sprague De Camp’s ‘Swords & Sorcery’ (Pyramid Books, 1963), and the entrancing Donald A Wolheim-edited ‘Swordsmen In The Sky’ (Ace Books, 1964) gathered exploits from the pages of antique magazines, while Lin Carter’s ‘Flashing Swords’ series (originally Granada Publishing, 1973) took things forward with new tales by established writers, Fritz Leiber, Jack Vance, John Jakes and Michael Moorcock. David A Riley’s intention seems to be to straddle the extremes, retaining the best of the old with new inputs and novel concepts. Such as the magical realism of Pedro Iniguez, the bagful of dreams that lap in around the images of his “A Thousand Words For Death”.

"Adrian Cole’s “The Eater Of Gods” strikes the right balance, his new ‘Voidal’ story touches all the essential genre bases, yet breathes new energies into the format with devious thieves Bluug and Hurranok employing all the humorous conman guile of Jack Vance’s Cugel as they bluster their way through the mountain city Yamazantra into the presence of the living god Cadavarion Celestes.

"To admit a vested interest, my own contribution to the anthology – “Antediluvia: Seasons Of The World”, draws on the wonderful Leigh Brackett, a troubadour Donovan Leitch poem, Atlantis and current evolutionary theory concerning an interglacial era in which at least three proto-human species interact as they share the world.

"Liberally illustrated by Jim Pitts distinctive illustrations, Conan might describe this anthology as ‘By Crom, it’s good!’" 

  amazon.co.uk

amazon.com

Monday 19 July 2021

Swords & Sorceries: Tales of Heroic Fantasy Volume 2 gets its first 5-star review on Amazon.com


Although it has already had several 5-star ratings, this is the first actual review on Amazon.com - and what a review!

Richard Fisher has written a comprehensive review of the book, with comments on all ten stories. Click on this link to read the full review, which concludes with:

"Out of the ten stories I would be hard pressed to pick a single favorite. Although four did catch my fancy. The Amulet and the Shadow by Steve Dilks most perfectly adhered to what I expect from a sword and sorcery story. Stone Snake by Dev Agarwal and Seven Thrones by Phil Emery each told a sparse tale adding details along the way changing the perception of the story at its closure. And A Thousand Words for Death by Pedro Iniguez was a concise tale of revenge with a nice helping of trickery.
"Can't get enough Sword & Sorcery? Good. Because Parallel Universe Publications has decided to publish a Volume 3. Sharpen your pencils because open submissions start August 1st and run through October 31st."

amazon.com

Sunday 18 July 2021

Black Gate: The Aesthetics of Sword & Sorcery: An Interview with Philip Emery

 

There's an excellent article in Black Gate about Phil Emery, whose story Seven Thrones is included in Swords & Sorceries: Tales of Heroic Fantasy Volume 2.

 

amazon.com

Thursday 15 July 2021

Still one of the best books published by Parallel Universe Publications

Cover art by Vincent Chong

"What distinguishes Kate Farrell’s work is the extraordinary accuracy and vividness with which she sets up her situations. She has an eye for detail and an outstanding ear for the way people think and speak. It is far from fanciful to see this at least partly as the product of her experience as an actress. In the theatre, a natural faculty for observing one’s fellow human beings is trained and honed. Listen to the narrator of “Waiting”. If you don’t know someone like that personally, you will have certainly heard her talking just behind you on a bus at some time. The intonation, the accent, the understanding, and the lack of it, are all so true to life. But the people Farrell evokes are not all from one social stratum, or one nation. Here is an ancient and corrupt Irish Priest (“The Way the Truth and the Life”), here is the wife of a notorious Argentinean dictator (“Las Cosas Que Hacemos por el Amor”), or the two Spanish schoolchildren in “The Efficient Use of Reason”, and they are all done with the same conviction, the same ruthless accuracy. Farrell’s eye is not heartless, but it is unclouded by any kind of sentimental affectation; her horrors emerge from what we sometimes call the commonplace. Very occasionally she touches on the supernatural, but when she does she does it superbly as in one of my favourites among her stories “A Murder of Crows” which shows that she can do an uncanny rural atmosphere with grim poetry as well as anyone. It is the gift of every worthwhile writer in this genre to make us realise that just beneath the surface of the banal and ordinary, there yawn great abysses of wonder and terror. I don’t know quite why this realisation, in the hands of a writer like Farrell, should be so thrilling, enjoyable even, but it is. There is not a dull page, not a dull sentence in And Nobody Lived Happily Ever After." 

From Reggie Oliver 's Introduction to And Nobody Lived Happily Ever After

Contents are:
Introduction by Reggie Oliver
Mea Culpa
Helping Mummy
A Murder of Crows
No Junk Mail
All in a Row
Dad Dancing
The Way and the Truth and the Life
My Name is Mary Sutherland
The Efficient Use of Reason
How I Got Here
His Family
The Sands are Magic
Once Upon a Time
A. Reeves Tale
Las Cosas Que Hacemos por El Amor
Peacock Blue Dress
Alma Mater
Waiting

Mea Culpa was first published in The Eighth Black Book of Horror, 2011
His Family was first published in The Ninth Black Book of Horror, 2012
Dad Dancing was first published in The Tenth Black Book of Horror, 2013
Helping Mummy was first published in The Screaming Book of Horror, 2012
The Sands are magic was first published in Terror Tales of the Seaside, 2013
Waiting was first published in Kitchen Sink Gothic, 2015
Alma Mater was first published in The Eleventh Black Book of Horror, 2015


You can order this book direct from us on this link, post free. 

 
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com  
Cover artwork: Vincent Chong

Sunday 11 July 2021

Submissions open for Swords & Sorceries: Tales of Heroic Fantasy Volume 3 on the 1st August for three months

Two possible covers for Volume 3 - artwork Jim Pitts


Submissions for Swords & Sorceries Volume 3 will open on the 1st August and close on the 31st October 2021

 
(Please do not send anything before the 1st August)


Payment is £25 per story regardless of length, plus a contributor's copy. The book will be published as a paperback and ebook. If a hardcover version is published we will pay an additional £25. Contributors can also buy extra copies of the book through us at cost price. 

Please send your submissions as attachments (doc or docx) to:

paralleluniversepublications@gmx.co.uk


You can send in more than one submission, but be aware we will not accept more than one story per writer.

Although we prefer original stories we are prepared to consider reprints. Just inform us where and when it was previously published. 

There is no limit on the size of submissions. 

Please send your story as an attachment, headed:

 "Submission - Swords & Sorceries 3"


And good luck!

To get a better idea of the kind of stories we are likely to publish in this anthology check out volumes 1 & 2:

  

The contents of Volume One are:

THE MIRROR OF TORJAN SUL - Steve Lines

THE HORROR FROM THE STARS - Steve Dilks

TROLLS ARE DIFFERENT - Susan Murrie Macdonald

CHAIN OF COMMAND - Geoff Hart

DISRUPTION OF DESTINY - Gerri Leen

THE CITY OF SILENCE - Eric Ian Steele

RED - Chadwick Ginther

THE RECONSTRUCTED GOD - Adrian Cole

The cover and all the interior artwork is by Jim Pitts. 
 
amazon.co.uk

amazon.com


 
The contents of Volume 2 are:

The Essence of Dust by Mike Chinn

Highjacking the Lord of Light by Tais Teng

Out in the Wildlands by Martin Owton

Zale and Zedril by Susan Murrie Macdonald

The Amulet and the Shadow by Steve Dilks

Antediluvia: Seasons of the World by Andrew Darlington

A Thousand Words for Death by Pedro Iniguez

Stone Snake by Dev Agarwal

Seven Thrones by Phil Emery

The Eater of Gods by Adrian Cole 

Illustrations by Jim Pitts.

amazon.co.uk

amazon.com

Other than for Swords & Sorceries: Tales of Heroic Fantasy we are officially closed for submissions. 

Please click onto this link for further information.

Friday 9 July 2021

A Distasteful Horror Story by Johnny Mains to be Out of Print at the end of July.


We will be ending publication of Johnny Mains' A Distasteful Horror Story at the end of this month, so there are just three weeks in which to buy a copy of the paperback or ebook. 

"A darkly humorous, satirical look at the tight-knit world of horror writers - and their fans. Contains no scenes of violence against actual books, only their authors”

Johnny Mains has been prominent in the horror genre ever since his 2010 debut anthology, Back from the Dead: The Legacy of the Pan Book of Horror Stories, which won the British Fantasy Award in 2011 for best anthology. Mains has been at the forefront of the UK’s new wave of horror, editing Best British Horror (Salt Publishing and NewCon Press), Dead Funny: Horror Stories by Comedians (edited with Robin Ince), and The Screaming Book of Horror.Mains has also written several collections of his own stories: With Deepest Sympathy (2010), Frightfully Cosy and Mild Stories for Nervous Types (2012) and A Little Light Screaming (2015).Mains has also written the introduction to Stephen King’s 30th anniversary edition of Thinner, and has discovered ‘lost’ works of fiction by Algernon Blackwood, Edith Nesbit and Daphne Du Maurier.

Paperback and ebook (kindle):
 


Swords & Sorceries: Tales of Heroic Fantasy Volume 2

 


The contents of Volume 2 are:

Introduction by David A. Riley

The Essence of Dust by Mike Chinn

Highjacking the Lord of Light by Tais Teng

Out in the Wildlands by Martin Owton

Zale and Zedril by Susan Murrie Macdonald

The Amulet and the Shadow by Steve Dilks

Antediluvia: Seasons of the World by Andrew Darlington

A Thousand Words for Death by Pedro Iniguez

Stone Snake by Dev Agarwal

Seven Thrones by Phil Emery

The Eater of Gods by Adrian Cole 

Illustrations by Jim Pitts.

Jason Hardy on the website Echoes of Valhalla: "Terrific Tales: Anthologies can often be a mixed bag for me, but this latest from David A. Riley was solid. Ten tales that were all enjoyable. Some ongoing characters and settings which is welcome in a themed anthology of this type. Quality publication all around with the usual excellent art on cover and a few interiors by seasoned pro, Jim Pitts. Sword and Sorcery of the 20's needs a strong ongoing anthology and (through two volumes) for me as a long time fan this one is the best available. My own personal favorites in this volume were Cole's "The Eater of Gods" (one of the better stories I read this year), Chinn's "The Essence of Dust" and Dilk's "The Amulet and the Shadow" (well written old school heroic fantasy in the Howard vein). Riley did a good job of choosing his tales. If you haven't tried this anthology series yet definitely climb aboard."

amazon.co.uk

amazon.com




 

Monday 5 July 2021

Future publications

Although a handful of our publications came earlier (Beyond magazine and Craig Herbertson's The Heaven Maker and Other Gruesome Tales), Parallel Universe Publications has only been properly running for the past six years, during which time we have published eight hardcovers, thirty-nine paperbacks and thirty-seven kindle ebooks. Of these, many have been single author collections. Unfortunately, of all the books we have published the single author collections have for the most part been our poorest sellers. We have therefore decided to concentrate our efforts in future on special projects, such as the forthcoming The Ever More Fantastical Art of Jim Pitts, and our very popular anthology series Swords & Sorceries: Tales of Heroic Fantasy

The art books we have already published (The Fantastical Art of Jim Pitts in hardcover, split into two volumes for paperback) are amongst the most time-consuming projects we have undertaken. Likewise, with open submission periods for Swords & Sorceries: Tales of Heroic Fantasy, this too takes up a lot of our time, especially with the number of stories we  received last time. 

Volume 2 of Swords & Sorceries: Tales of Heroic Fantasy was published in June. All going well, we are aiming to bring out a third volume before the end of the year, with an open submissions period a month or so beforehand.   

The Ever More Fantastical Art of Jim Pitts is progressing well and should be out in hardcover later this year, packed with black and white and full colour illustrations.