Once Upon a Time there was a negative, put-down review of a Sword and Sorcery novel (are you surprised?). The reviewer sneered at the book as being, “The Heavy Metal of Fantasy Fiction.” But the put-down backfired.

The editor of the book put the quote on the back cover of the mass market paperback to sell it. And he hired Boris Vallejo to do the cover art.

The book has since been re-published as a large format “trade” paperback (Hawk Books, 2000), then a Russian language hardback (Alpha-Kniga, 2002), and in 2018 an ebook (Crossroad Press). So have the other two books in the Hel Trilogy, Warrior Witch of Hel (book one), Death Riders of Hel, and Werebeasts of Hel. The quote was on the back of Death Riders.

The editor of the Hel Trilogy was a cunning warrior himself. He had to maneuver around the approval committee at the publisher. The negative voters did not really care to publish Sword and Sorcery and felt more background motivation was needed up-front, before the Sword and Sorcery action got rolling. The editor replied that the motivation would be taken care of as the action progressed, and as a kicker, he told them that no Sword and Sorcery reader cared what Conan the Barbarian’s mother ate for breakfast the day Conan was born on a battlefield.

But he did not have enough support in the committee to buy a Sword and Sorcery book. He lacked one vote. So he waited for a day when the deciding NO vote was away from work, brought it to a vote, and got the book approved.

By 1986, I had written four published novels, two Horror and two Sword and Sorcery. Warrior Witch of Hel and Death Riders of Hel featured a Sword and Sorcery warrior woman named Bloodsong.

I wrote the Hel Trilogy under a pen name, Asa Drake, because I had used that pen name for two previously published horror novels. “Asa” paid homage to the vampire played by Barbara Steele in Mario Bava’s Black Sunday (European title, Mask of the Demon). Also, “Asa” is a Scandinavian term in Norse mythology, “Asa-Thor,” for example, as well as the name of a famous Swedish Queen. Why did that matter? My father was born in Sweden.

Being Asa Drake, a “published writer,” helped sell my Sword and Sorcery to a new publisher, so the pen name was used on the Sword and Sorcery books, too.  

If you saw my post here last year about Bathory’s Quorthon, the “Asa” is significant. He dedicated “One Rode to Asa Bay” to me because of Bloodsong.

Like many readers looking for new things to read in the 1960s and 1970s, I tried Lancer Books’ Conans and discovered Sword and Sorcery. I had never heard of Robert E. Howard or Conan the Barbarian.

I was first attracted to Conan the Avenger by the Frazetta cover. I devoured it in one sitting. That night, I dreamed I walked through a bleak landscape with a sword yelling “CROM!” This Sword and Sorcery stuff was a winner!

So! I bought the rest of the Lancer Conans (and still have them), then read them and wanted to write my own.

But I did not write any Sword and Sorcery until years later. Why then? Because it was 1982, and I saw Conan the Barbarian on the big screen!

I bought the soundtrack on the way home from the theater and started writing to the music. I was aiming at a Conan-like barbarian, but then my fingers typed, “The rider was a warrior. Her name was Bloodsong.”

What?

Her?

So I backed up and tried to change it.

It refused to be changed.

Bloodsong the warrior woman won.

My editor proudly called Bloodsong his “female barbarian” (at a time when warrior women were far from the norm), and at conventions he enjoyed introducing me, with a laugh, as his “female barbarian writer.” 

At the first convention I attended as a “pro,” the month the first Bloodsong was published, I sat in the audience of a panel discussion about warrior women. But! The panel of big-name science fiction and fantasy writers, all men, concluded that a warrior woman was unbelievable. Too weak. Too emotional. No, really! 1985!

Three novels and two short stories later, Bloodsong still has more to tell. Valkyries of Hel is in progress. The first battle takes place in Black Mark Pass between Quorthon’s Fjord and Asa Bay, and there is a character who thinks he might have played in something called a Heavy Metal band, in Sweden, before he died.

Writing Sword and Sorcery is still a winner with me, whether reading it or writing it. Sword and Sorcery will live as long as readers enjoy reading it, writers get a kick out of writing it, and publishers like DMR Books keep publishing and promoting it.

And we only need to keep listening to Heavy Metal and musicians creating it to keep it alive and defiant, too. And that includes Bathory and Quorthon. Whether he is still among us physically or not, Hail the Bathory Hordes! Quorthon Lives!

For the record, Popular Library originally published Asa Drake’s Hel Trilogy under their Questar imprint. The other editions use my birth name. The editor at Popular Library was the late Brian Thomsen. He also edited two Horror novels of mine, Torture Tomb (1987) and Raw Pain Max (1988). RPM features two Heavy Metal lovers who listen to 1980s metal played on Z-ROCK radio (All Metal All the Time!—“If it’s too loud, you’re too old!”).

Heavy Metal, Horror, and Sword and Sorcery?

Perfect.  

Onward!

C. Dean Andersson says, “I write Horror Novels and the Viking Heroic Fantasy of my continuing Bloodsong Saga. All of my published novels are or soon will be available as eBooks. See my bio on Amazon.com for more info.”