Multiple individuals involved with the project have suffered long-term, serious issues involving either their health or the health of loved ones, causing significant delays as well as great difficulty in predicting when the delays would end.
This in turn made it very difficult to know when or how exactly to update you about the book as anything we said one week could become incorrect by the next.
We are now comfortable aiming for a release date of "Some time in May, June if we absolutely have to", while planning to provide updates with greater frequency, and a more exact release date as that time approaches.
We are grateful for your patience, and would like to assure you that we finish our projects - our past two years of magazine crowdfunds have both been fulfilled (2023, 2024), and our other book we crowdfunded in 2024 is on track for release in late April.
Scroll down to see a preview of one of the six original illustrations inside the book.
The crowdfund exclusive bookmarks have come in! Scroll down for pictures.
Below you can read some words by Jay Wolf about the process of editing this anthology.
IN DETAIL
Hi there!
We wouldn't blame anybody for asking "What's happening with Beating Hearts & Battle-Axes?". We've asked that a few times ourselves.
It's not my place to violate the privacy of our editor or contributors by giving details of the serious medical issues I alluded to above, so I'll just to have to ask you to have faith I'm not kidding when I say I read specific words in the emails making me aware of these issues which you would never want to hear a doctor say to you.
As publisher I had to decide whether or not to replace contributors, perhaps even take over as editor, and in the end I decided to stick with our team. They are the people whose names were on the tin when you chose to back this project, and they're people I strongly believe in, who I want to stand by in their trying time.
I invoked our other projects above because I do understand that some of you have perhaps backed crowdfunding projects in the past which may have vanished for long periods or failed entirely to materialize, and want to reassure you thisis notthat. However this last stretch goes precisely, it will result in you getting your book.
Thankfully there are some fun items I can share with you now! First up, the bookmarks are in:
SIDE ONE. Also pictured: our two-sided bookmark for Double-Edge Sword & Sorcery.
SIDE TWO.
Secondly, we'd like to share with you one of the six original illustrations Trevor Ngwenya is creating for the anthology:
Trevor's illustration for "A Day in Irighaya; or, The Invention of Love" by Bryn Hammond.
Sometimes when fleeing angry people, you lose your pants! It happens to the best of us.
And now some behind-the-scenes insights as written by our editor:
ON EDITING THE ANTHOLOGY, by JAY WOLF
Hello everyone!
This summer/autumn/early winter has been a busy one fraught with peril—some real, some hypothetical, some yet lingering over our collective heads. Editing the stories for this anthology has been one of the things keeping me going through it all, and I am glad to say we are onto revisions.
As a developmental editor, one of my great joys is in finding the core of the story—the reason that story must exist, the thread which binds it all together. Most of the time, I’m not the final boss; I’m simply tasked with fishing out that core of the story and helping the author thread it through more thoroughly (say that five times fast!) before it moves on to its venue and final editors. It’s quite fulfilling to be the executive editor in this scenario.
For an anthology like this one, I read each story independently as it arrives: the discovery phase. As they accumulate, I check the stories against each other—not for comparisons’ sake but for theme, topicality, tone, flavor, and other unquantifiable elements. How do each of these stories go together? How do they fit the theme and the trappings of the subgenres I’m actively blending for this project? In this instance, our stories must balance the elements of two subgenres with specific expectations while also breaking new ground and being delightful reads.
For my methodology and purposes, I need to know the voice of each one, to unify them, aiming for a set of stories in conversation with each other. As I read, I make notes for all the things editors make notes for, but I also write an edit letter alongside it that sets out a more cohesive vision. This is, in part, because I know with my unique brain maladies that I’m more likely to cover everything I have in mind for a particular story if there are two different places to put my ideas and revisions forward and I’m less likely to lose them.
The biggest surprise for me in editing these stories was how lovely and varied the romances in them—and how little, overall, I had to do in initial edits for that romance to shine through. A significant reason “romantasy,” a buzzy catchword, stays in the zeitgeist is at least in part because it’s a powerful tool for character depth. Here we have two subgenres with a lot of codified expectations and tropes, both with limitless grounds for subversion and growth, and six stories that I think exemplify both Sword & Sorcery and Romantic Fantasy, with gritty adventures and unique relationships at their collective cores.
FINALLY
Hello, publisher speaking again.
So yes, in short we are aiming for May with the possibility of June as the release month.
We'll update more frequently and narrow that down to a more specific date as the release grows closer.
We are grateful for your patience, and look forward to bringing you sunnier news in our next update!
