The other night, Cirsova alumn and Pilum Press author Schuyler Hernstrom was on The Dungeon Delver talking about past, current, and future projects!
If you missed it, be sure to check it out!
Also, don’t forget to back JD Cowan’s Star Wanderers! We’ve got a little over a week left to make our stretch goals!
We’ve met our initial $2500 goal for JD Cowan’s Star Wanderers!
We have two whole weeks left to achieve our Stretch Goals!
Jacob Calta will compose an additional track for inclusion on the Star Wanderers Soundtrack EP, based on a story from the collection.
This track will be included with the Soundtrack Add-On.
For every additional $1000 raised, Jacob will compose another story-inspired track for the Star Wanderers Soundtrack.
If we reach $4k, all physical backers (including non-US backers!)will receive a Star Wanderers trading card.
Sword & Scandal is a new anthology of NSFW heroic fantasy from publishing provocateur J. Manfred Weichsel, author of twelve really wild books. It’s going to have an open call for submissions, ensuring that you, the reader, get the most sexy and gory sword & sorcery fiction out there. But the anthology won’t happen without your help. Sword & Scandal needs to raise $2,500 in order to happen, and only has until June 5th to do it. Visit the Kickstarter page and preorder your copy of Sword & Scandal now! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/j-manfred-weichsel/sword-and-scandal?ref=creator-nav
I was a guest on The Gutter last friday.
I had the weekend from hell, so I missed the first half of the show, but we had a lot of fun in the last 45 minutes talking about a couple of my favorite authors, Leigh Brackett and C.L. Moore!
Don’t forget! We’re almost to our goal for JD Cowan’s Star Wanderers!
OUT NOW! Available on [paperback](https://a.co/d/aLEFI2Q) ($7 USD) and [eBook](https://a.co/d/bhSD1eT) ($5 USD), join Recon Agent Roger Steele in a night Haven won’t soon forget! When the seasoned gray wolf is sent undercover to investigate an agent’s death, peaceable protest organization Haven Reformation, led by the tough-talking Lucille Devenreux, reveals itself to be the top layer of a deadly conspiracy! It’s a perplexing affair fraught with duplicitous politicians, strange technology, and the ever-mysterious intentions of the sentient computer network A.C.E.S., and it all adds up to a lesson in how to short-circuit a revolution!
Agent Steele is one of many colorful characters populating bizarre world of [365 Infantry](https://365infantry.substack.com/), a multimedia webzine going into its third year. The overarching storyline is that of a war for freedom in the distant future populated by wolves. On one side stands the officers and allies of the 365th Infantry, a desert-based resistance group who wages war with souped-up hot rods and motorcycles. On the other side, a dystopian megacity held in the infinite grasp of its sentient central computer network, the Artificially Controlled Eco-System (A.C.E.S.) who perverts her care-taking programming into a crusade to “perfect” all carbon-based life in the city of Haven. In a comp, it’s Blade Runner, Mad Max, and Heavy Metal Magazine thrown into a blender, starring metalhead wolves in a world made of both pulp heroism and offbeat speculative fiction. There are multiple storylines (both serial and episodic), and instead of building out the world through giant tomes of lore, we explore everything by simply telling stories.
A lot of stories.
It’s an unapologetic passion project, born from someone with a deep love of classic sci-fi, genre cinema, hero pulps, and basically anything else that comes to mind, unified by the unique aesthetic of a wolf in denim and leather, behind the wheel of an overpowered muscle car. In the illustrated main magazine (released quarterly), we follow a semi-anthology format of five ongoing series. The War concerns the efforts of the Infantry and the go-get-em officers at the group’s core such as Lieutenant Gibson Blanc, The Hunt is a peplum-flavored side quest concerning desert dweller Valentina and her team of psychologically-tortured fighters, The Urban Avenger stars punk vigilante Lita on the wild streets of Haven with her blood-red VW Bug, The Speedfreak Files revolves around three lawmen who play in a metal band and take out the scum and villainy of the Wastelands, and our “pure” anthology series Tales from the Front Lines fleshes out the world thru any and all genres.
You can jump in wherever you please, pick a single series to read or follow all five and the many side stories that appear between issues. The point is to have fun first and foremost. We also explore the series through music, audio productions, comics, and more.
[The Short Circuit Revolution](https://a.co/d/aLEFI2Q) is our fourth release this year, and fifth overall. If you want to catch up on the rest of the Force’s operations, we have three paperback collections available, as well as a print edition of our quarterly that will be released alongside every future installment. I hope you dig what we’re doing here, and you’ll keep an eye out for us when we roll into town next.
[The 2022 Annual Collection](https://a.co/d/6J1Eq8Z)
[The 2023 Annual Collection](https://a.co/d/3fppS90)
[The Electric Anthology Vol. 1](https://a.co/d/cgEiIRc)
[The 365 Infantry Quarterly: Spring 2024](https://a.co/d/glDvyEa)
We’ve added new stretch goals to Star Wanderers!
Jacob Calta will compose an additional track for inclusion on the Star Wanderers Soundtrack EP, based on a story from the collection.
This track will be included with the Soundtrack Add-On.
For every additional $1000 raised, Jacob will compose another story-inspired track for the Star Wanderers Soundtrack.
If we reach $4k, all physical backers (including non-US backers!)will receive a Star Wanderers trading card.
It’s the final week of the Cirsova Spring Sale!
This week, through Friday, Misha Burnett’s Bad Dreams and Broken Hearts and Small Worlds are both on sale for only 99 cents!
JD Cowan was on Sunday Superversive yesterday discussing his forthcoming books, Star Wanderer!
If you missed it, check it out, and be sure to back the Kickstarter!
Hanuvar’s adventures continue in this second volume from Howard Andrew Jones, this time even further in the heart of the Dervan territory. The old general must reconnect with old allies and turn old enemies into new friends. In this volume, however, there’s a new wrinkle in that Hanuvar has been blessed/cursed with a restored youth; the change is temporary, rapidly reversing, and a potentially fatal.
I’ll admit that I was a bit worried about this new twist in Hanuvar’s character, as part of what made him so interesting in the first volume was being an aged hero who couldn’t necessarily rely on his strength and fighting prowess the way that he once had. However, this new facet means that Hanuvar is forced to be more clever in playing his clandestine roles. Howard uses this as an opportunity to vary the stories he’s able to tell with Hanuvar a bit more, beyond “the old soldier in disguise.”
The best stories in this volume, like in the previous, tend to be the more mundane adventures, with the standouts being a treasury heist and foiled assassination attempt on the Dervan Emperor. My only real quibbles with Hanuvar have been that stories with stronger supernatural elements often cheat Hanuvar out of earning his ending, for better or for worse, and the supernatural elements do not inform the shape of the Dervan, Volani, and other various cultures within the setting as strongly as I feel like they ought to.
This second volume feels a bit less pulpy; it’s still strong and well-written fantasy with Sword & Sorcery elements, though it leans more into long-form storytelling as various intrigues unfold across several stories. While at no point did I ever get bored with it, this volume felt longer than the first. By the last few stories, I ready to be done, if for no other reason that I had lot of other books and manuscripts that I needed to tackle. The overarching meta-plot of this volume unfolds much more slowly, and there is a lot of thematic, if not narrative, repetition. Getting the age curse lifted is probably the most compelling main narrative; the process of Hanuvar building his network, handling logistics and infrastructure, and tracking down various groups of Volani slaves has a bit of a tendency to drag outside of the enemy-to-lover subplot between Hanuvar and Volani aristocrat whose father might be what you’d call “a collaborator.”
Like the first volume, the stories where Antires is there for Hanuvar to play off of and vice versa tend to be the best. Some of the new characters are fun; unfortunately, a lot of my favorites tended to be either bit players or killed off sooner than I’d like. A very minor villain from the first volume returns, and I would’ve loved to have seen more of her, but sadly, she gets killed in her reappearance.
Overall, the second volume of Hanuvar is strong recommend from me, and I’ll probably be picking up the third volume later this year. If you enjoyed the first Hanuvar book, you’ll probably enjoy this one. If you didn’t like Lord of a Shattered Land, you’re not going to like more of the same but marginally less episodic. Even if I hadn’t received the second volume as a review copy from Baen, I probably would’ve picked it up based on the strength of the first one. I do feel like the series could’ve stood to be broken up a bit more, into six shorter volumes, but Baen is known for its thick brick hardcovers if not pulp sword & sorcery.
Still, it’s a good book.
Speaking of good books, don’t miss out on JD Cowan’s Star Wanderers, on Kickstarter now!
Detective Ronan Renfield is a Galactic Enforcer sworn to protect the innocent and bring evil-doers to justice to maintain order throughout the stars.
The Agent is a nameless knight errant tasked with hunting the most brazenly wicked and blasphemous who threaten order and nature across the cosmos.
Alone, they face strange and diabolical horrors on backwater worlds and the corrupt and dangerous criminals who threaten civilization.
Together, they are the Star Wanderers!
This collection features eight thrilling tales of raygun adventure, swashbuckling sword fights, and cyberpunk mystery, including four never-before published adventures!
Dead Planet Drifter – Ronan Renfield lands on a swampy world that has been overtaken by death and decay-worshiping cultists! [First Published in Cirsova Magazine of Thrilling Adventure and Daring Suspense, Vol. 2 Issue 11, 2022]
Cold Heart of Ouranos – The Agent travels to the ice planet Ouranos in pursuit of a genocidal mad scientist who has holed up in a lost city! [First Published in Planetary Anthology Uranus, 2020]
Golden Echoes – Ronan faces down a diabolical terrorist leader who uses illegal technology to carve a mystical paradise out of reality itself! [First Published in Storyhack Action and Adventure, issue 7, 2021]
Armageddon Spring – A cursed sorceress queen is doomed to conquer and seek revenge her wrongs, driven by a mysterious entity known as the Artisan! [All New Story!]
Cold Finger Girl – A young woman barely escapes the twisted human experimentation of the supposedly peaceful Plateau and it is up to Ronan to keep her alive! [All New Story!]
Judgement Sun – The Agent fights to protect a wayward prince from the undead cyborg minions of a necromancer intent on breaking the royal line and dooming a world by fulfilling an ancient prophecy! [First Published in Planetary Anthology Sol, 2020]
Midnight Machineguns – Ronan investigates a series of terrorist attacks carried out by exploding cyborgs, and the trail leads him to an apocalyptic transhumanist cult! [All New Story!]
Slow Death on San Sebastian – Detective Ronan Renfield and the Agent team up in an epic clash against a rogue elemental Knight who desires to warp the soul of an entire planet! [All New Novella!]
Get Star Wanderers as an eBook.
Star Wanderers will be offered in a standard massmarket pocketbook format.
The 6″ x 9″ Trade Paperback will be offered exclusively through this Kickstarter!
The 6″ x 9″ linen-wrapped Hardcover with wrap-around dust jacket featuring Anton Oxenuk’s full cover art will be offered exclusively through this Kickstarter!
Written and produced by Jacob Calta, “Star Wanderers: The Soundtrack” is a specially commissioned music single that embodies the characters and incredible adventures of Detective Renfield and The Agent. The sleuth’s seedy cyberpunk settings yield infectious retro electronica with a DnB twist, while the planet-hopping knight enjoys far spacier fare, with thunderous drums and chilly synth melodies. Backers selecting this add-on will receive high-quality MP3s that are sure to set the mood for the riveting stories yet to come!
JD Cowan is a writer with an obsession for stories and Truth. He takes pleasure in looking for Light in the places where darkness grips the tightest. His works include Y Signal, the Pulp Mindset, the Gemini Warrior series, and short stories in Storyhack, Anvil, and Cirsova magazines.
He blogs at wastelandandsky.blogspot.ca and can be found on Twitter @wastelandJD for those interested.
Jacob Calta is a filmmaker, writer, and composer, inspired by fantastic storytelling in all its various forms, from the heights of classical excellence to modern experimentation. He is the creator of multimedia anthro sci-fi series 365 Infantry, the current layout editor for ANVIL Iron Age Magazine, and all-around handyman on forthcoming Western magazine Go West: Frontier Tales. Known to frequent Twitter/X @stagescreen60. All links can be found at https://linktr.ee/jacobcalta. The world, books, music and more of 365 Infantry can be found at https://linktr.ee/365infantry
Cirsova Publishing began in 2016, launching its flagship quarterly fantasy magazine, which has published over 30 issues. They are also known for publishing Michael Tierney’s Wild Stars science fantasy saga, Mongoose and Meerkat and other works by Jim Breyfogle, and the strange fiction of Misha Burnett. Later in 2024, Cirsova Publishing will be releasing an omnibus edition of Adrian Cole’s Dream Lords trilogy.
Cirsova 