Crowdfunding New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine 2026 with Oliver Brackenbury

We were very pleased to welcome Oliver Brackenbury on to the blog to chat with us about the crowdfunding campaign for New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine issues 8, 9, and 10. You can read our interview with him below, and support the crowdfunding campaign here.

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Thank you so much for joining us for this blog interview! We’ll start off with one of our standard podcast opening questions–tell us something great that’s happened recently.

Honestly, when the crowdfund reached 100% funding in only 29 hours, but for something unrelated to all that…my smooth hair fox terrier just saw a baby chick for the first time and watching them together was definitely something great.

What are you currently reading or what’s up next on your TBR? What made you pick up this book?

I’m a channel-surfer with books so a short answer is hard. Let’s go with…

Contemporary Sword & Sorcery: Arcane Arts and Cold Steel - Writing Sword-and-Sorcery Fiction by David C. Smith. I picked this up because I’ve worked with David and was impressed enough by the attention to craft in his writing to re-publish a novel of his. Naturally I’m curious to read his guide on writing The Sacred Genre!

Classic Sword & Sorcery: Swords Against Darkness V, edited by Andrew J. Offutt. Since becoming an editor myself, my interest in anthologies has grown; I enjoy the editor’s introductions as much as the stories, and like to think about the potential decisions behind which stories were chosen or why they were placed in the order they were…

Something Not Sword & Sorcery!: The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy. I greatly enjoyed The Road and have been slowly working, in no particular order, through McCarthy’s bibliography as a result. I always try to have a book on the go that’s not in this genre I think about all the time, but McCarthy often feels like cheating because his style is so easy to imagine being found in a classic S&S story from a 1930’s issue of Weird Tales.

What inspired you to start New Edge Sword & Sorcery?

The detailed version can be read for free in issue #0 of the magazine, a prototype born of that original inspiration. The short version is that I rediscovered my love for the genre roughly nine years ago, found the online community a few years later, and became so invested in wanting to make a meaningful contribution to Sword & Sorcery’s latest revival that I decided to start a magazine so that with every story, article, and illustration I could say “This is what S&S can be!”

A big part of that “This…!” is showing how you can love the classics and bring forward the good bits, while leaving behind the clunky or objectionable elements, while making Sword & Sorcery a more inclusive space for everybody.

Why did you decide to crowdfund issues of New Edge Sword & Sorcery?

When we made issue #0 there was a lot going for us; skill, enthusiasm, a clear vision…but no money. All involved were happy to do one issue for love, however you can’t keep asking people to do that.

Arts grants in Canada don’t tend to go to genre work, and I wouldn’t want to take a loan from a bank even if they’d give me one, so crowdfunding was the only way to raise the funds necessary to improve the quality of the magazine while doing that thing you have to do if you want something to last - pay people for their work.

Is crowdfunding a publication different from a typical pre-order process? If so, how?

I often refer to them as “pre-orders with a party”. Every crowdfund, especially for the magazine as it’s our flagship publication with so many more moving parts than a novel or anthology, we do our best to make them entertaining - mainly through livestreams of TTRPG sessions, short story discussions, interviews, music nights (dungeon synth mainly), and anything else related to Sword & Sorcery we can think of.

So I guess it’s fair to say they’re a lot more work than simply putting a book up for pre-order and then doing your best to advertise on social media. Crowdfunds take ample planning, piles of graphic design work, and more - but I think it’s worth it for the benefits in promotion, and how it drives you even harder to put out the most impressive publication you can.

Does the choice to crowdfund these works affect the publication process at all?

A little bit, yes. Because authors can always shop their stories elsewhere if, heaven forbid, the crowdfund fails, I'm happy to ask them to send in their manuscripts in advance. But artists can’t do a lot with illustrations for a magazine that died, so I don’t feel comfortable asking them to begin work until some time after the crowdfund is at least 100% funded. This does result in lengthening the overall production process. I’d say each year of the magazine from my first asking an author for a story to the final customer getting their copies averages eighteen months long. If we were big enough to pay for the printing out of pocket, I imagine we could shave as much as six months off of that.

However it’s worth it for the security of not taking a big loan to pay for a print run and then risking utter financial ruin if you don’t get enough initial sales. One of many benefits of crowdfunding for a publisher is security that should the campaign fail you might be out some money for any advance art you commissioned, like covers, but you won’t lose your shirt.

Speaking of security, though, there is the security of continued success. We’ve never failed to fund the magazine or a book, and are currently on track for more than 200% of this year’s goal with the magazine. I’m trying to internalize this wonderful support from those who want to read our publications so I can be a bit less cautious next time in ways that will speed up the production process. After a lot of struggle and risk it can be strangely difficult to internalize “The hard work paid off, buddy, and you can take things a little easier!”

What was it like working with another editorial staff for the collaboration with SWORDS AGAINST!?

Great! I’ve been online chums with one of their team, Julian Bernick, for a while now and was very happy to meet Paul & Carlos a few months back when we first discussed teaming up for this collaborative crowdfund. We’ve found a sweet spot between not stressing each other out and working hard toward our shared goals, and it’s brought me great pleasure to pay forward New Edge Sword & Sorcery’s good fortune by exposing our audience to Swords Against!, helping them get an excellent new S&S magazine with its own unique voice off the ground.

What have you learned from crowdfunding previous issues that you were able to apply to this campaign?

One lesson is that need to make things as easy for backers as possible; they’re all busy people on Al Gore’s Internet and so you want to do things like make a pledge tier that lets them grab everything you’re offering with one click rather than pledging for a basic tier and then having to click like thirty times to add all the other stuff they want through the add-ons section.

I mean, think about how often you’ve gone to read an article on some site but had to click to close a half dozen ads and went “Ugh, nah.”, then went elsewhere. Make it so people have to click less to get what they want!

What stretch goal are you most excited for?

I love art direction, so it’s tempting to say the very first one, “DOUBLE ART”. But aside from doubling the amount of interior illustrations honestly I’m most excited to see if we could pull off our eighth author raise and eighth artist raise. That would get us to 12c/word, tying for the highest pay currently offered by any indie SFF magazine, and tripling both author & artist pay from the base level we started at.

As a creative person raised by two self-employed artists, I have strong feelings about treating creative people the way I always would like to be treated, the way anybody should be treated really; paying them as much as we possibly can is part of that!

Tell us about some of the stories that are going to be appearing in these issues!

I don’t put stories in the magazine I’m not excited about, but of course I can’t mention them all here so we’ll just go with a smattering…

Molly Tanzer is bringing us the third in a series of new, official Jirel of Joiry stories produced in collaboration with the estate of C.L. Moore, JIREL IN THE FOREST OF NIGHT. The wilful French warlord so often prone to adventures in other realms is being pestered by a young noble desperate to marry her and things do not go well for either of them when he makes his big proposal during a hunt by some nearby woods…

Then there’s our special theme issue, TIMEWORN TERRA. It builds on a very niche science-fantasy tradition some call “dying earth fiction”, telling stories of futures so far they feel ancient; when magic & technology blur together; our home is transformed into a wondrously strange setting; where Earth's days are short yet still we lust and laugh! For those who are familiar with the names, think tales in the vein of Vance, Wolfe, CAS’s Zothique stories, and William Hope Hodgeson’s The Nightlands, to name a few. For those who aren’t familiar, don’t worry about it, we’re big on making every issue an easy place for those new to S&S.

I’m also excited for a piece of flash fiction by June Orchid Parker, a little bonus unlocked by people’s support for the crowdfund, starring Varika, the S&S wrestler from June’s novella Suplex & Sorcery that’s due out for June this year. Such a fun character, and very much one of the things we mean about trying to do new things in the S&S space while respecting the core tenets of the genre.

How did the New Edge Sword & Sorcery magazine evolve into the larger Brackenbury Books imprint?

It was blessedly straightforward. I knew there were things I wanted to do which wouldn’t work in the magazine, like reprint a beloved S&S novel (Sometime Lofty Towers) or produce my love letter to the classic Ace Doubles of old (Double-Edged Sword & Sorcery, two novellas in one book with two covers). We started by crowdfunding an idea we felt needed more room than a theme issue of the magazine, an anthology of spicier & romance-centered S&S called Beating Hearts & Battle-Axes, and took it from there!

I hope to eventually expand into other genres but for now our books are all Sword & Sorcery, with a smidge of its science-fantasy cousin, Sword & Planet, in the mix.

You're also writing a book. How has your work as an editor informed your writing process, or vice versa?

A big thing is that when I have my editor hat on it helps me understand how best to express my notes to the authors in ways they’ll find digestible & actionable, while when I’m wearing my writer hat it helps me well…go easier on myself! I made [a mistake]? That’s okay, lots of authors I work with and respect do. We’re all just humans doing our best.

What kind of topics do you cover in your podcast about the novel writing process?

Oh, scads, but the main thrust is interviews with authors, editors, and publishers about how they do what they do, and then the solo episodes with just me talking where I walk the listener through every step of the process of outlining my ambitious Sword & Sorcery story collection aka The Novel.

What is one thing that you love about the current state of SFF and what is one thing that you wish you saw more of?

How there are many different paths to publishing it, there’s no One True Way, and how accessible it all is thanks to the Internet.

I love the enthusiasm I see for producing SFF fiction, but I wouldn’t mind more venues for SFF book reviews and related non-fiction; interviews, essays, and articles, especially ones willing to elevate lesser-known authors & publishers. I understand how the attention economy incentivizes focusing on the bigger, more established folk but that’s not good for the health of the scene in the long run.

What would you like readers to take away from these upcoming issues of New Edge Sword & Sorcery?

Other than a good time, of having been Taken Elsewhere? Hopefully a healthy sense of possibility within the genre, as well feeling seen on the page & behind the keyboard.

Thank you so much for taking the time to answer a few questions for us! Do you have any parting thoughts or comments you’d like to leave for our readers?

Keep your swords sharp, and your sorcery numinous!

And finally, where can you be found on the internet if our readers want to hear more from you and New Edge Sword & Sorcery?

Until it ends at noon on March 14th, I hope y’all will find us at the crowdfund for our 2026 issues: https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/brackenbooks/new-edge-sword-sorcery-2026

Otherwise the best place to find us is www.brackenburybooks.com or www.newedgeswordandsorcery.com, while my S&S writing podcast can be found at www.soimwritinganovel.com

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About New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine

Each issue will hold approx. 45,000 words of Sword & Sorcery fiction, as well as interviews, essays, book reviews, and more.

WHAT IS SWORD & SORCERY?

A unique fantasy sub-genre known for outsider protagonists with personal motivations, often facing dark and dangerous magic in short episodic tales with historical inspiration and horror elements!

WHAT IS NEW EDGE SWORD & SORCERY?

A dynamic magazine "Made with love for the classics, and an inclusive, boundary-pushing approach to storytelling!"

AVAILABLE IN:

Accessible digital, classic softcover, and luxurious hardcover

All physical copies are printed traditionally, on spacious 8.5 x 11 inch pages, using high quality paper.

Hardcovers use durable sewn-stitch binding, allowing you to lay your book perfectly flat.

Support the crowdfunding campaign here