Call for Submissions for Issue 3 (Spring 2021)

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS / WHETSTONE / Issue 3 (Spring 2021)

Tuesday, December 16, 2020

WHETSTONE is an amateur magazine that seeks to discover, inspire, and publish emerging authors who are enthusiastic about the tradition of "pulp sword and sorcery." Writers in this tradition include (but are not limited to) the following: Robert E. Howard, Fritz Leiber, Jack Vance, Michael Moorcock, Karl Edward Wagner, David C. Smith, and many more. "Pulp sword and sorcery" emphasizes active protagonists, supernatural menaces, and preindustrial (mostly ancient and medieval) settings. Some "pulp sword and sorcery" straddles the line between historical and fantasy fiction; at WHETSTONE, however, we prefer "secondary world settings," other worlds liberated from the necessity of historical accuracy. Want to learn more about our aesthetic? Issues 1 and 2 are available as free PDFs on our webpage: whetstonemag.blogspot.com

About the editor: Dr. Jason Ray Carney is a lecturer in the Department of English at Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Virginia. He is the co-editor of the academic journal The Dark Man: Journal of Robert E. Howard and Pulp Studies and is the area chair of the "Pulp Studies" section of the Popular Culture Association. He is the author of WEIRD TALES OF MODERNITY (McFarland) and RAKEFIRE AND OTHER STORIES (Pulp Hero Press) and the editor of SAVAGE SCROLLS (Pulp Hero Press).

About the associate editor: Chuck E. Clark lives in Southern Wisconsin with his wife and four children. He graduated from the University of Kentucky with a Political Science degree, apprenticed as a jeweler, joined the navy, and now fixes laser microscopes. He has been published in WHETSTONE and The August Derleth Society's newsletter, SAGE OF SAC PRAIRIE. He loves collecting rocks, books, and whiskey.

Length: We prefer compressed stories that are nevertheless cohesive narratives (1500 to 2500 words). These limits are firm. No more, no less.

Publication, payment, and rights: Publication, payment, and rights: Issues will be published as .pdf files. If work is selected for publication in WHETSTONE, authors will (1) be paid an honorarium of $10 and (2) will be asked to provide, by contract, "First North American Serial Rights." In our opinion, this means that copyright is NOT transferred. All copyright stays with you, the writer; however, you will have sold/transferred a form of "exclusive use rights" called "First North American Serial Rights" (FNASR). This is the right to publish your unpublished work for the first time, and ONLY the first time, no more. The important thing to remember is that some professional publications may ask for FNASR upon acceptance of a specific work; you are not legally permitted to provide those for that specific work after publication in WHETSTONE, for you have already rendered their use to us. In other words, once you publish a work in WHETSTONE, that work's associated FNASR have been sold/transferred. You CAN publish your previously published work elsewhere as a reprint but only as long as that publication does not require FNASR. This is a long way of saying that WHETSTONE is an amateur publication, meant for showcasing emerging talent for the consideration of professional markets (which is why we kept the word count so low). In essence: save your best work for higher paying markets!

Submit: Proofread standard manuscripts should be sent to the editor/publisher, Dr. Jason Ray Carney, at jason [dot] carney [at] cnu [dot] edu as .doc or .docx attachments. Include the following subject line: "WHETSTONE: [Last Name]." Please keep cover letters brief. A story title and a one- or two-sentence bio is sufficient.

Dates:

• Submission deadline for issue 3: Sunday, March 28th, 2021, 11:59p.

• Editorial decisions: Sunday, May 2nd, 2021.

• Publication of inaugural issue: Friday, June 11th, 2021.

More info: 

https://twitter.com/SorceryWs

https://www.facebook.com/whetstonemag

Webpage: https://whetstonemag.blogspot.com/

Discord: https://discord.gg/ezEMRD4

Spiral Tower Press

Whetstone Issue 2 Now Available!

Whetstone Issue 2 is now available. You can download it HERE. This issue includes several great stories. Thanks to Chuck Clark (Associate Editor), Nicole Emmelhainz (my wife), Luke Dodd, and all the great contributors for helping us release this issue. We hope you enjoy it. Please share widely!

Cover for Issue 2. Art by Rick McCollum.

 

Here is the cover art for our second issue, to be released on Saturday, December 5th, 2020. The art is by Rick McCollum.

The Sorcerer's Four Gems, a Miscellany (Issue 6)

    

SPITTLEDRUM, the Four-eyed Demon, has scoured the internet for new eyes: four sword-and-sorcery gems! Illustration provided by Mustafa Bekir.

"The Familiar's Four Gems will be posted intermittently. It is a curated list of old and new digital resources for amateur sword and sorcery writers and readers; it will occasionally provide short reviews where appropriate. If you have something you would like to include, contact us. -JRC

Goodman Games, publisher of Dungeons Crawl Classics, hosted a digital convention, Bride of Cyclops Con. Part of the convention was a "Sword and Sorcery Writer's Track." Here are the videos of the panels.

Goodman Games: Digital Panel: The Best Sword and Sorcery of the 20th-Century. Six sword-and-sorcery fans and scholars compare notes about the important works in the genre, starting with foundational fiction and moving on to more recent times. This panel will talk details, not just an author’s name, but why a particular story or novel is worthy of note.

Goodman Games: Digital Panel: Finding the New Edge for Fiction Writers. Seven modern crafters of heroic fiction and sword-and-sorcery sit down to discuss how they plot stories and create characters.

Goodman Games: Digital Panel: Getting Sword-and-Sorcery into your Role-Playing Game. Four veteran game masters talk about tips and tricks for getting your game sessions to feel more like a rip-snorting sword-and-sorcery tale.

Goodman Games: Behind the Scenes w/ Publishers of Sword & Sorcery Fiction. Where can you find heroic fiction in the modern age? Well, at least five of those places are represented by the members of this panel, who’ll be talking about trends in the industry, how to get your story ready for the editors, and related topics.

WHETSTONE on Facebook.
WHETSTONE on Discord.
WHETSTONE on Twitter.

Flashes of Wonder #3: Sorcerer as Secret-Seeking Protagonist

  

UKA THE UNDYING, the zombie sorcerer, is experimenting with flashes of dark magics to blast the minds of bards! Illustration provided by Mustafa Bekir.

"Flashes of Wonder" will be posted every week. It will feature a sword and sorcery flash fiction prompt. Share your "flash of wonder" on social media. -JRC

Sorcerer as Secret-Seeking Protagonist: Sorcerers, thaumaturges, and dark-priests are frequently the antagonists in S&S fiction. But what if they were the protagonist? Write a 500 word S&S story that focuses on the sorcerer as the secret-seeking protagonist, an outsider, who desires eld lore rather than blood-stained coin. How does this change the role of the barbarian figure? How does this change the setting focus? What elements of typical S&S take prominence, and which ones take on a more secondary role?(500 words)

WHETSTONE on Facebook.
WHETSTONE on Discord.
WHETSTONE on Twitter.

Sword and Sorcery on Reddit.

The Familiar's Four Gems, a Miscellany (Issue 5)

   

SPITTLEDRUM, the Four-eyed Demon, has scoured the internet for new eyes: four sword-and-sorcery gems! Illustration provided by Mustafa Bekir.

"The Familiar's Four Gems will be posted every week. It is a curated list of old and new digital resources for amateur sword and sorcery writers and readers; it will occasionally provide short reviews where appropriate. If you have something you would like to include, contact us. -JRC

Book Review: Deep Cuts: The Alluring Art of Margaret Brundage (2013) by Stephen D. Korshak & J. David Spurlock. "The Alluring Art of Margaret Brundage is not quite a biography, however. It is primarily a collection of obscure but critical sources and essays on her life and work: memoirs and interviews normally only found in moldering and expensive fanzines, as well as new essays that expand on her life before and after Weird Tales. On top of that, the book includes a full gallery of her pulp art, and numerous photos of her life and art you won’t find anywhere else, all reproduced without the clipping or muddying of color typical of a lot of pulp art books. It is a gorgeous production from start to finish—and an enlightening one, as Brundage herself is a fascinating subject." 

Lexicon: Grognardia: Words Gary Taught Me. "High Gygaxian is the term I coined to refer to the pedantic, archaism-laden, run-for-the-dictionary writing style often employed by Gary Gygax, particularly in his AD&D rulebooks and adventures. I'm on record as adoring this idiosyncratic manner of speech. For me, High Gygaxian establishes the feel of the particular strain of fantasy that I associated with Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. This is one area where I believe AD&D is superior to OD&D and goes a long way toward explaining the enduring influence of this version of the game, even though it's been twenty years since any currently published RPG bore this title."

Dungeon Synth Album: Amn: Lands of Intrigue. "The Lord of Murder shall perish, / But in his doom he shall spawn a score of mortal progeny / Chaos will be sewn from their passage / So sayeth the wise Alaundo / So sayeth the wise Alaundo."

Digital Gaming Convention: Bride of CyclopsCon in October! "Bride of Cyclops Con will be online everywhere October 16-18, 2020. And this convention will feature not only Dungeon Crawl Classics, but also Dungeons and Dragons, and every other game that you can associate with Goodman Games. We’re talking DCC, MCC, XCC, DCC Lankhmar, D&D, and maybe even some of the others that you don’t think about as much—we’re looking at you, Metamorphosis Alpha, DragonMech, Dinosaur Crawl Classics, and others!"

WHETSTONE on Facebook.
WHETSTONE on Discord.
WHETSTONE on Twitter.

Library Lucre: Review of Gunthar, Warrior of the Lost World, by Steve Dilks

SLITHER THE BOOK BURGLAR has raided a lich library for rare scrolls, grimoires, codices, librams, and books, and, having returned to his shadowy winesoak in the seedy part of town, is ready to find a fence! Illustration provided by Gray Moth.

Library Lucre features short reviews of new sword and sorcery (less than 300 words). Contact us if you have a book you want to review or want us to review. -JRC

Gunthar, Warrior of the Lost World, by Steve Dilks (Carnelian Press, 2020), paperback, 300 pages. Reviewed by Jason Ray Carney.

This is great, old school sword and sorcery in the 1970s, Lin Carter and Gardner F. Fox, vein. I was thinking about homebrewing beer while reading this: in homebrew contests, successful beer is judged "to style," i.e. the gold medal beers hew closely to the profile of the style judged, i.e. a gold medal "Dortmunder" lager, has, according to the Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP) guidelines, this narrow flavor profile: "Grainy-sweet malt nor floral, spicy, or herbal hops dominate, but both are in good balance with a touch of malty sweetness." The gold medal Dortmunder lager isn't the one that is iconoclastic, that incorporates, say, banana pulp or cardamom pods. Instead, it is the one that the skillful brewer creates to satisfy the judge's very specific flavor expectations. In an analogous way, Gunthar: Warrior of the Lost World is "gold medal" sword and sorcery anthology, an artful execution of the genre's archetypical conventions, tropes, and distinctive diction (a true love letter to the genre). Nevertheless, there are a few compelling innovations, i.e. the prevalence of super science (perhaps a nod to KEW's Bloodstone?) as a kind of foil to sorcery, the incorporation of mutants, and the use of fever dream montage and vivid imagery; however, the joy of this anthology is not how it experiments with the genre but in how it gives a spark of vitality to a specific period of the genre again, i.e. the S&S of the 1970s. A collection of novellas, a standout was Lord of the Black Throne, specifically its phantasmagoric ending, a montage of sword and sorcery images that recalled psychedelic, blacklight-illumined velvet paintings of sorcerers and warriors battling at the end of time in cosmic depths, or the airbrush tableaus of eldritch skullduggery on 1970s custom vans. The cover art painting by Regis Moulton is great, and the rough-edged interior ink illustrations by Steve Lines perfectly harmonize with the stories. If you enjoy Thongor, Brak, and Kyrik, you will enjoy the adventures of Gunthar, Warrior of the Lost World. Available on >Amazon<.

WHETSTONE on Facebook.
WHETSTONE on Discord.
WHETSTONE on Twitter.

Join us in the Whetstone Tavern (Discord Server).

 Whetstone Tavern (CLICK HERE) Illustration by Jason Ray Carney.

Flashes of Wonder #2: The Barbarian and Nature

 

UKA THE UNDYING, the zombie sorcerer, is experimenting with flashes of dark magics to blast the minds of bards! Illustration provided by Mustafa Bekir.

"Flashes of Wonder" will be posted every week. It will feature a sword and sorcery flash fiction prompt. Share your "flash of wonder" on social media. -JRC

The Barbarian and Nature. One of the most common plots is man against nature. Consider the figure of the barbarian in sword and sorcery. How does this figure relate to nature? When may the figure work with nature, and when may the figure work against it? In 500 words, create a sword and sorcery flash fiction with just two characters: a barbarian and some aspect of nature. Begin the action with the barbarian fighting against nature but then allow the barbarian to find a way to come together with nature at the end. (500 words)

WHETSTONE on Facebook.
WHETSTONE on Discord.
WHETSTONE on Twitter.

The Familiar's Four Gems, a Miscellany (Issue 4)

  

SPITTLEDRUM, the Four-eyed Demon, has scoured the internet for new eyes: four sword-and-sorcery gems! Illustration provided by Mustafa Bekir.

"The Familiar's Four Gems will be posted every week. It is a curated list of old and new digital resources for amateur sword and sorcery writers and readers; it will occasionally provide short reviews where appropriate. If you have something you would like to include, contact us. -JRC

Blog Post: The Ten Greatest Sword-and-Sorcery Stories by Robert E. Howard, by D.M. Ritzlin. "I asked a panel of wizened experts (disclaimer: said panel consists solely of myself) to select the ten greatest sword-and-sorcery stories by Robert E. Howard. All of Howard’s most notable characters are represented here: Kull, the Atlantean who became King of Valusia, the Puritan avenger Solomon Kane, and of course, Conan the Cimmerian. If you’re mostly familiar with Howard’s work through the Conan the Barbarian films or comic books, this should prove to be a helpful reading guide." 

Digital Gaming Convention: Bride of CyclopsCon in October! "Bride of Cyclops Con will be online everywhere October 16-18, 2020. And this convention will feature not only Dungeon Crawl Classics, but also Dungeons and Dragons, and every other game that you can associate with Goodman Games. We’re talking DCC, MCC, XCC, DCC Lankhmar, D&D, and maybe even some of the others that you don’t think about as much—we’re looking at you, Metamorphosis Alpha, DragonMech, Dinosaur Crawl Classics, and others!"

Academic Blog: The Weird Tales Three and Verbal Black Magic, by Chase A. Folmar. "While reading any of the Weird Tales Three, there’s a certain quote by Clark Ashton Smith that always springs to mind: "My own conscious ideal has been to delude the reader into accepting an impossibility, or series of impossibilities, by means of a sort of verbal black magic, in the achievement of which I make use of prose-rhythm, metaphor, simile, tone-color, counter-point, and other stylistic resources, like a sort of incantation."

Dungeon Synth Album: Eldritch Wizardry: Where None Dare Venture. "Far over the treacherous waters of the western sea, there is an island shrouded in an unearthly fog. Upon it stands an ancient fortress, once the dwelling place of a merciless warlord whose defenses were unmatched by any kingdom. Until one day, a curse was brought upon the island, when an old sorcerer was burned alive by the warlord's men. A curse that swallowed them all in the earth and roots beneath them. The fortress still stands upon the forsaken isle, surrounded by the very roots that conquered the once-mighty warlord; as a warning to all who dare enter and attempt to claim the treasures left behind by the condemned."

WHETSTONE on Facebook.
WHETSTONE on Discord.
WHETSTONE on Twitter.

Flashes of Wonder #1: The Undead Monster and the Return of the Past

UKA THE UNDYING, the zombie sorcerer, is experimenting with flashes of dark magics to blast the minds of bards! Illustration provided by Mustafa Bekir.

"Flashes of Wonder" will be posted every week. It will feature a sword and sorcery flash fiction prompt. Share your "flash of wonder" on social media. -JRC

The Undead Monster and the Return of the Past. In the Gothic literary tradition, the undead and undying--e.g. ghosts, zombies, vampires, and other spectral forms--often represent haunted memories that should have been forgotten, horrible sins that should have been punished, taboo traumas that should have been confronted. For this flash fiction, write a sword and sorcery story that features a protagonist who encounters a hostile undead monster... but charge this encounter with the weight of a sin unpunished, a trauma returned, a weregild yet to be paid. In Gothic horror, the typical protagonist might flee this ambush of horrible revelation. How does sword and sorcery proceed differently? Is it fair to say that the blades at hand steel the nerves? Perhaps foolishly? (500 words)

WHETSTONE on Facebook.
WHETSTONE on Discord.
WHETSTONE on Twitter.

The Familiar's Four Gems, a Miscellany (Issue 3)

 

SPITTLEDRUM, the Four-eyed Demon, has scoured the internet for new eyes: four sword-and-sorcery gems! Illustration provided by Mustafa Bekir.

"The Familiar's Four Gems will be posted every week. It is a curated list of old and new digital resources for amateur sword and sorcery writers and readers; it will occasionally provide short reviews where appropriate. If you have something you would like to include, contact us. -JRC

Blog Post: The Silvery Key: Masculinity in S&S: It's Complicated. "Make no mistake: I love this stuff. I was drawn to it as a kid, and inspired to pick up weights to try to look like my heroes of the comics and silver screen. Today I continue to champion and defend it. I push back, hard, against censorious critics who want this type of fiction memory-holed. You can pry my sword-and-sorcery from my cold, dead fingers." 

Blog Aggregate: The DMRtian Chronicles, 9/6/202. This is DMR Books weekly aggregate of sword and sorcery and pulp-related and blog posts and news articles. 

Academic Blog: The Pavilion Blog: Conan the Barbarian and the Collapse of Civil Discourse. "Make no mistake: this is still a very fun movie and its classic soundtrack works with its visuals and campy, committed performances to create a shockingly thrilling experience. But what I want to focus on here is how the film’s politics map so neatly upon our own in 2020."

Goodreads Review: Howard Andrew Jones, The Desert of Souls, reviewed by Jason Ray Carney. "If my descriptions give the impression that this is an over-artful/overwrought novel, let me conclude by assuring you... it is not: to the contrary, it is an enthralling and joyful tale of mystery, daring, wonder, and adventure."

WHETSTONE on Facebook.
WHETSTONE on Discord.
WHETSTONE on Twitter.

The Familiar's Four Gems, a Miscellany (Issue 2)

SPITTLEDRUM, the Four-eyed Demon, has scoured the internet for new eyes: four sword-and-sorcery gems! Illustration provided by Mustafa Bekir.

"The Familiar's Four Gems will be posted every Wednesday. It is a curated list of old and new digital resources for amateur sword and sorcery writers and readers; it will occasionally provide short reviews where appropriate. If you have something you would like to include, contact us. -JRC

Blog Post: Deep Cuts: "Her Letters To Lovecraft: Catherine Lucille Moore." "If C. L. Moore had never received a letter from Howard Phillips Lovecraft, she would still be known and regarded as one of the greatest Weird Talers of the 1930s. Yet they did correspond, from 1935 until Lovecraft’s death in 1937, and in that brief span of time that exchange of letters changed both of their lives."

Podcast: The Cromcast: A Weird Fiction Podcast (Season 5, Episode 12: "An Owl Hoots in the Daytime." his week, we join John the Balladeer in a lonely cabin at the base of a secluded mountain, where possums as big as dogs wander, an ancient treasure lies buried, and Owls Hoot in the Daytime! This story was one of the later John the Balladeer stories that Manly Wade Wellman published, and it certainly has that feeling of a sort of finality that we couldn't quite put our fingers on to describe accurately!

Reddit Community: /r/Cimmeria Robert E. Howard Reading Club "We are reading through all of Robert E. Howard's Conan stories in order of publication [...]. This month we read and discuss: "The Tower of the Elephant"

Review: DMR Books: Dawnward Spire, Lonely Hill: A Review. "The one hundred and thirtieth natal anniversary of H.P. Lovecraft is upon us. HPL was nothing if not a writer of letters. It was one of his defining traits. Lovecraft’s correspondence with Clark Ashton Smith is among his great legacies. Fortunately, Hippocampus Press has finally published Dawnward Spire, Lonely Hill: The Letters of H.P.  Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith in fairly affordable trade paperback editions."

WHETSTONE on Facebook.
WHETSTONE on Discord.
WHETSTONE on Twitter.

The Sorcerer's Sanctum Podcast (Episode 2): Schuyler Hernstrom, "The Gift of the Ob-Men"

retrocultcast · Sorcerer's Sanctum Episode 2: Schuyler Hernstrom, "Gift of the Ob-Men"

The Familiar's Four Gems, a Miscellany (Issue 1)

SPITTLEDRUM, the Four-eyed Demon, has scoured the internet for new eyes: four sword-and-sorcery gems. Illustration provided by Mustafa Bekir.

This is the first post of what will be a regular feature, a curated list of old and new digital resources for amateur sword and sorcery writers and readers; it will occasionally provide short reviews where appropriate. -JRC

Classic Blog Post: Conan and The Fan Fic Writers of Doom, by Howard Andrew Jones. "You can fit the sum total of all the Conan that Howard wrote (including some fragments and rejected stories) into one large hardback. That’s not a lot of fiction about such a great character, and so for decades people have been trying to create new tales of adventure starring Conan, mostly because they wanted MORE!"

Podcast: Appendix N Book Club (Episode 74): Andrew J. Offutt’s "Swords Against Darkness" with special guest Brian Murphy "Brian Murphy joins us to discuss Andrew J. Offutt's "Swords Against Darkness," reading fantasy fiction as a kid, writing about swords and sorcery, second generation sword and sorcery authors, the understated prose of Poul Anderson, O. Henry’s sword and sorcery, multiclass characters, the collected Ryre stories, elves and dwarves in swords and sorcery, sword and planet, and much more!"

Reddit Community: /r/Cimmeria Robert E. Howard Reading Club "We are reading through all of Robert E. Howard's Conan stories in order of publication, and this time it's 'The Scarlet Citadel.' In two weeks on August 15 we start the next one 'The Tower of the Elephant.' Join the conversation!"

New Sword and Sorcery Fiction: Swords and Sorcery Magazine: In the House of Vezzanius, by Davide Mana. "It was the thieves’ dance that had often allowed her to walk through houses where masters and servants were asleep, or minding their chores, like a ghost, unseen and unheard. Past a trunk under an old carpet, past a wooden mannequin on which a sharp blade had outlined the major organs, and stabbed them, she came to the trap door leading down." This is an intriguing story about a rogue who strays into a wizard's study at her peril.

WHETSTONE on Facebook.
WHETSTONE on Discord.
WHETSTONE on Twitter.

Final Cover for Issue #2. Artist: Rick McCollum

Issue 1 Available!

Here is a link to a PDF of >>WHETSTONE 1<<. Many thinks to all the talented contributors! Please feel free to share this. Looking forward to issue 2!

Cover for Inaugural Issue

Here is the cover of our inaugural issue; it features a great illustration by Bill Cavalier. Publication date: Friday, June 12th! ⚔️✊😊

Submissions Update #1

Just checking in (full transparency): as of today, we have received a total of **26** story submissions. We have not begun reading them yet. Our three story editors plan on convening on April 1st, 2020 for our initial reading session. *So, to those interested, you still have the rest of March to write and submit your story! We hope you do!* ✊😊⚔️

10th Flash Fiction Monday: Sword and Sorcery and Unadorned Prose

10th Flash Fiction Monday: great art, literary art specifically, manages to discover synergy between form and content, style and theme. Consider an example of prose narration that 100% avoids figurative language, metaphor, lyricism, excess description, etc., a prose style that is as unadorned as a soldier of fortune’s cruel, plain, but razor sharp blade. With what “theme” would such a Spartan, unadorned prose style harmonize? Write a S&S story of no more than 300 words that avoids figurative language, complicated syntax, and that uses language precisely and economically. In doing so, tell a thematically appropriate story for this style, a story of the unadorned, the undecorated, the plain, the profane, the raw.

WHETSTONE will now provide token payments to contributors.

We have been researching the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America requirements for venue membership. Getting WHETSTONE to qualify will be a long and incremental process. Two key components (there are several more) are that the venue must be *print* and it must *pay contributors.* We have received a lot of support from readers and submitters and are encouraged to start the multi-year journey of qualifying as an SFWA Market. This intention was is due to the fact that we have received a small donation that will allow us to provide a $10 token payment to contributors. This payment is not much and almost completely symbolic but it does allow us to accurately describe WHETSTONE as a paying market. Give us a few days to update the CFP on the webpage and elsewhere. Thanks for your continued support!

Whetstone Promises to Submitters and Readers

The Official Whetstone Seal

Here is the official "Whetstone Seal," illustrated by Bill Cavalier.

Highlight from 2nd Flash Fiction Monday

Prompt: Dynamic characters undergo transformations. Often the crux of this transformation can be dramatized as an epiphany, a moment of deep insight or understanding that changes the character. Write a story that takes place over several years where a soldier of fortune changes from "mercenary to crusader" or from "neutral to loyal" and does so because of an epiphany. Less than 400 words!

A Double-edged Knife, by Chuck E. Clark (362 words)

Gerrat had not killed as many men as winter, but he had come damn close. Years he had been at it, killing for a god who he knew was real, but spent scant attention to. The sky was real. Didn't mean he worshipped it. His god was real. He killed for him. It was just what he did. He was good at it.

There was a priest of some cult, some heresy that made a mockery of their god. Kartheh, that priest's name had been. Some kind of power play. He had not concerned himself with the details.

He should have, though.

A few guards, some cultists, no difficulties. Just a few dead bodies after he came through. Then he found the sanctum.

What was left of a young man was spread across the altar, parts that didn't seem to add up to what had once been a person. A thousand deaths on his hands, but this was different. What he did was clean, had a purpose. A purity. This was awful in a way that even he could feel the evil of. A person's pain drawn out like hot copper, stretched out into an unnatural wire of suffering. He had killed the priest, as efficient and clean as always, but carried the wrongness of what he had seen like a weight pressing out under his skin. That was the first and last time he had asked his god why he had killed someone. 

The answer, filtered through priests and oracles, left him weightless with shock.

The heretical priest had tortured the young man on the altar, but that was not the problem. That was apparently normal. The problem was that the young man's still living insides had been spread about the altar in the wrong direction and order, directly against the teachings that Gerrat had never read or thought of.

Tortured wrong. That was the heresy. The reason for his upbringing and discipline and skills. His whole life.

That day, Gerrat made himself a new life, and a new goal. He was always good at killing. He would see how much discipline and skill it took to kill a god.