Is Sword and Sorcery dead?

BOOKS

Looking for a good book to read? Something that is escapism and takes you away from the current world which is all "Global Pandemic" and "Global Warming"?

Well, good news... We have a solution.

Read a fantasy book set in a world which doesn't have pandemics or global warming. Or if there is a plague in that world, at lease that plague isn't real, and any global warming/cooling happening in that world is just fictional.

Back in February 2020 (during the Before Times...) Canadian fantasy writer Charles Moffat wrote a post for Lilith Press titled "Is Sword and Sorcery Dead? Hardly."

During his post he describes doing much the same thing that Robert E. Howard (the grandfather of Sword & Sorcery and the creator of Conan the Barbarian) did, but with several big differences:

• He depicts racial diversity in a positive light.
• He depicts women in realistic and often positive roles.
  

So... Basically it is "Woke Sword & Sorcery". That is something the fantasy genre really needs honestly. None of the sexism or racism you might see in old fantasy books, which are sometimes blatantly racist and other times feels more like closet racism.

Nothing wrong with Wokeness in our opinion. It is the people who are anti-Woke you need to worry about.

Furthermore, Charles Moffat's Sword & Sorcery series "Wulfric the Wanderer" is doing quite well. All of the books thus far in the series have either 4.5 or 5 stars and some glowing reviews from fans.

Lastly, Moffat's newest addition to the series is coming out on December 1st 2021 and is already available for preorders for the ebook. You can get it via:

Amazon.ca: "The Raven's Feast"

Amazon.com: "The Raven's Feast"

Amazon.co.uk: "The Raven's Feast"

And others. Each ebook in the series sells for approx. $2.99 and each paperback copy for $5.99. Exact pricing may vary on region.

The lengths of each story in the Wulfric the Wanderer series varies. Some are short stories, some are novelettes and only 1 thus far is a novella. The recommended reading order is below, however Moffat says you don't need to read them in order. In true Sword & Sorcery tradition each story stands on its own and they don't need to be read in order (because apparently he doesn't write/publish them in order).

1. Portal of Destiny (Short Story)
2. The Cult of the She-Bear (Novella)
3. Shifting Shadows in Iztark (Novelette)
4. Black Monoliths of Al-Kazar (Short Story)
5. The Unbreakable Arrow (Novelette) 
6. The Raven's Feast (Short Story)
   

 So sit back, make yourself some coffee or tea, and enjoy a good story or two so you can get away from the crazy world we currently live in and visit a fantasy world where oddly enough things seem a whole lot simpler and less crazy.

Although the giant raven eating someone on a rooftop is pretty weird, we admit. (Giant ravens also appear in one of Moffat's novels: "The Demon's Sacrifice", which you should also check out.)

Bringing Back Lilith News?

 So here's a weird idea.

Should we bring back "Lilith News"?

It was never really gone. It is a bit like a zombie... lurking under the floorboards in the basement, its heart still beating away irregularly like some phantom in a story...

Happy Halloween!

A fan of Lilith News + the old Lilith News Newsletter contacted one of us recently via social media and commented about missing the appeal of such a news blog.

The good news we have to impart is two fold:

#1. Lilith News never really left, we just switched over to posting things on Lilith Press instead, although the volume of news articles is certainly down. Currently it has about 280+ pages and growing, whereas Lilith News at its height had 1300+. However the new site is growing, but slowly.

#2. We have decided that this old site still has its uses (despite the lack of advertising revenue) so we are going to partially bring it back and revive it by posting new things once in awhile. Not in the volume that we used to obviously, but we shall see.

Part of this decision is so that we can boost visibility / marketing for Lilith Press, so this is fundamentally a good marketing decision. Lilith News has 1300+ posts, so any efforts we do on here with respect to marketing is boosted by the fact that it is a large website. By making new posts it makes the site relevant again to Google, which means the old posts also become relevant.

The Demise of Newspapers...

Honestly, newspapers aren't the only sources of news that rise and fall based on advertising revenue. That is what decimated Lilith News. Newspapers, blogs, we all suffer from the same thing if for any reason we lose our advertising revenue. We depend on it. It is the lifeblood of the news. We are not all as fortunate as the BBC or CBC that we are government funded and thus guaranteed to be kept around as a news/entertainment source.

The demise of newspapers has largely been driven by a shift in where advertising money is going, from print newspapers and magazines to online advertising. This was a huge important shift and it has left many newspapers and magazines to be shut down or shrunk to a size never seen before.

That advertising revenue that is online is now largely taken by websites like Google and Facebook, any newspaper smart enough to monetize their website for advertising, and bloggers like ourselves who rely upon the advertising so we can pay our bills, our mortgages, etc.

So if a website (even a big one like Lilith News) for whatever reason loses its advertising revenue it is a huge financial blow and the bloggers have to make ends meet via whatever regular jobs we can do. And for some part, that is what we have been busy doing during the past number of years.

We all have to make ends meet somehow.