New Edge Sword & Sorcery, a short fiction and non-fiction magazine begun in Fall 2022 with issue #0, today launched a thirty-day crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter to produce issues #1&2. These will be released sometime in the Fall of 2023.

Michael Moorcock will have a brand new, original story featured in issue #1. He joins twenty other fiction & non-fiction authors, such as Canadian horror master Gemma Files, Margaret Killjoy, David C. Smith, Hugo Award-winner Cora Buhlert, Milton Davis, and more. There will also be a tale by Jesús Montalvo, an author from the burgeoning S&S scene south of the US border, translated from its original Spanish.

Nineteen artists are spread across the two issues, including Morgan King, who directed Lucy Lawless in his 2021 rotoscope-animated Sword & Sorcery film The Spine of Night. Samples of the various artists’ work are available on the Kickstarter campaign page, while also being shared across the magazine’s Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter accounts.         

Each issue will feature seven original stories and four works of non-fiction: one book review, one essay, one in-depth interview, and one historical literary profile of figures like Charles Saunders or Cele Goldsmith. All stories, essays, and the profiles will be paired with at least one original B&W illustration.

“At least” one, because the Kickstarter’s stretch goals are focused on three things – enhancing the book, beginning by doubling the number of illustrations, making the book more affordable outside North America by discounting international shipping, and paying contributors as much as possible. Starting at semi-pro rates, the majority of the stretch goals are alternating pay raises for authors and artists.

Editor, Oliver Brackenbury promises the magazine is “Made with love for the classics and an inclusive, boundary-pushing approach to storytelling”, delivering high quality writing and art in a wide variety of styles. Sword & Sorcery can be many things and still be Sword & Sorcery.

New Edge Sword & Sorcery will be available in digital, perfect bound softcover, and sewn-stitched hardcover formats. Interiors are printed on firm, 100gsm cream paper at a spacious 8½x11 inches. Stretch goals also include bookmark ribbons and foil embossing for the hardcover editions.

Readers can try issue #0 for free in digital, or priced at cost on Amazon PoD, through the website.

If the Kickstarter succeeds, Brackenbury has plans for publishing further issues, themed special issues, and eventually expanding into books, with a line of anthologies & novellas.

First day backers will receive an exclusive bookmark featuring original art which will never be shared or used anywhere else. All the more reason to back the campaign.

[Based on a press release.]