PROOFS: We've reached an important new stage - the Ozalid proofs! After we use them for one last proofreading, we'll send our final files to our printers, who'll begin production of the physical issues. See pics further down.
Ozalid proofs are full prints of each issue that are intentionally done on cheap paper, and left unbound.
The point of them is to have a final, physical object you can use to check for typos and make sure the layout is coming out the way it should.
This year the inside cover of our softcover edition will be printed on, and Nat's had fun making some silly period ads for NESS, among other things, to go there.
Even in this format, it sure is fun to see the endsheets!
Up top are the Ozalid version, just there for completionism's sake, while below we have the "wet" proofs which are exactly what we'll see in the magazine proper.
We've not yet received ribbon samples to choose from for the hardcover edition's bookmarks, but will soon. To give you an idea, here's the samples from last year.
Yellow was for #4, red for #3. All our ribbon colors are chosen from the two-color combination chosen for a given issue's logo as seen on the back of the hardcover edition.
There are also glossy, final product-quality loose covers for checking how the colors have reproduced.
On the right-hand side you'll see we've jazzed up the circle around Jirel's head from what was seen in the crowdfund.
We also get several interior "wet" proofs, pages identical to what you'll find in the final magazine. There was one interior art page we were unsure about... luckily it reproduced fine! Here's an extremely tight crop/zoom. What is this castle or city? You'll find out when you get issue #6 of NESS.
But first....first I gotta crack open a can of Celsius and get to proofreading these Ozalids!
The perfectly normal inside of my shopping bag today.
...be a great boost toward us launching more Sword & Sorcery novella series next year. It's a length that works very well with this fast-paced genre, as Robert E. Howard proved himself in works such as People of the Black Circle, with room for greater development of plot, character, setting; yet lean enough to never outstay its welcome.
...we'll soon be crowdfunding four novellas! Yes, starting at 4pm EST on Tuesday, September 9th and running for three weeks, ending September 30th, we are crowdfunding a set of four new Sword & Sorcery novellas! We've been revealing them steadily over the last four weeks and now you can see them all in greater detail at this URL: https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/brackenbooks/new-edge-sword-sorcery-novellas-2025
Two of these are stand alone sequels to the pair of novellas which made up Double-Edge Sword & Sorcery! You don't have to have read DESS to enjoy Bryn Hammond's What Rough Beast? or Dariel R.A. Quiogue's The Hunt of a Thousand Leagues, but it certainly doesn't hurt to enjoy more stories by our sensational "steppe siblings".
Meanwhile June Orchid Parker takes a turn for the lighter side of S&S with her supernatural wrestling cage match of a novella, Suplex & Sorcery! And Steve Hugh Westenra has crafted a cosmic swirl of S&S, S&P, and more that we call The Barbarian at Dream's End.
