100 sites for fiction writers: #30 - Rogue Blades Entertainment

This is an ongoing series looking at websites that can be of help to fiction writers with their craft and career.

Rogue Blades Entertainment

Every reader and writer has their favorite genre. Some like romance, others fantasy or horror or westerns or ... the list could go on for a while. You get the drift. And you probably have your own favorite literary genre or two.

But one thing nearly all genres have in common is a hero as a character. Sometimes that hero is more than a little dark around the edges, and sometimes the hero isn't even the main character in a story, but there's a hero somewhere. Even in tales told by the bad guy, that bad guy has to face off against someone.

Quite often heroes are thought of as big, burly fellows wielding an even bigger sword or packing a six-shooter on their hip, but heroes can come in all varieties, as modern fiction often shows us.

But how many book publishers out there have a real focus upon heroes? Not many. In fact, I can only thing of one.

Which publisher is that? Rogue Blades Entertainment (RBE).

This publishing company has been around for a few years now, and so far its focus has been on heroic fantasy fiction, but that's going to change over the coming years. Fantasy will still likely be at the forefront, but the head honcho at RBE, Jason M. Waltz, has shown interest in expanding into other genres. All with a focus remaining on the heroic, of course.

If you are a writer, you obviously want to check out RBE to see if it is someplace you can send your work.

So far this publisher is known for fantasy anthologies, such as Return of the Sword, but in the future novels and other longer works of fiction might be of interest to RBE and Waltz.

But besides RBE being a possible market for you, there is another reason to visit this site. I'm talking about theHome of Heroics portion of the RBE website. Somewhat like a rolling blog, the Home of Heroics offers articles every few days from different writers and editors and other people working in the publishing business. Some of these people are full-time professionals, others only part-time professionals, and a few are budding writers.

Within the Home of Heroics you can find all kinds of articles about write, fantasy, general fiction and more, but the kicker is that each article will have a focus upon heroes and the heroic. Some articles are even about real-life heroes, such as Thailand's Somdech Phra Jao Taksin Maharat.

A writer can learn a lot from these articles. Tips abound for writing about heroes, how to construct them as characters, how to place them in dire circumstances, how to come up with a different type of hero, etc. You can also learn quite a bit about the history of heroic fantasy and heroic fiction in general.

Even if you are in the mood for some reading that doesn't have to do with writing, there is plenty of historical interest to be found in RBE's Home of Heroics. Give it a try.