Welcome to the Winter Solstice 2024 issue of Eternal Haunted Summer. Our theme for this issue is “fortune and luck.” Improbable events. Random associations, positive and negative. Is a benefit for one a disaster for another? Is it chance or is it divine intervention? Freak accident or the will of a higher power? Do we have the power to change our fate? Or is the outcome already written? The poems, short stories, and essays included here represent a wide variety of spiritual traditions, sacred tales, fairy tales, and personal experiences as they explore the nature of fortune and luck, both good and bad. 

In Poetry, Michale Routery returns with “Afaggdu’s Eclipse,” a short piece inspired by Welsh mythology, while Gordon Cash makes his Greek myth-inspired debut with “Among the Chosen.”  Scott J. Couturier’s “An Occasional Guest” looks to the heavens, while Lorraine Schein’s “Arcana X” draws on the classic tarot for guidance. The narrator of Mike Sluchinski’s “at the bottom of the bottle” understands the power of stories, while the narrator of “Beating the Odds” by Simon MacCulluch is convinced that he is smart enough to outwit the tale in which he finds himself. Cathy Watness makes her EHS debut with the Red Riding Hood-inspired “Big Bad Heartburn,” followed by Lynn White’s debut “Coloured,” a what-might-have-been based on an ancient Greek tale of anthropogenesis. Elizabeth Davis returns to the pages of EHS with their divinatory “Crow Love Song,” while Allister Nelson’s “Daphne” reflects down the years on her chosen fate. Clay Franklin Johnson turns to Scottish lore for his haunting, and haunted, “The Fairy Ring,” in contrast to Sarah Sadie’s “Frayed Wisconsin: Sky,” whose narrator lies in awe of the beauty, strangeness, and happenstance of creation itself. Solape Adetutu Adeyemi makes their EHS debut with a lament of modern life, a question for “The gods of traffic,” while Kaaren Whitney’s “Handsel” turns back to traditional home blessing rites. Devan Barlow’s “Hazelnuts” invites us to make our own fate and fortune with a bit of proactive hearth magic, and Nicole J. LeBoeuf’s “Know Thyself” advises us to walk consciously and willfully into the future we choose. In Deborah H. Doolittle’s poem “Lot’s Wife” questions that fate forced on her by divine judgement, even as the narrator of Lissa Sloan’s “This Luck” schemes to change his divine fate. Finally, the miller’s daughter questions “A Twist of Fate” that won her a throne in Deborah Sage’s poem, while Jay Sturner and Jennifer Crow explore “Variations on the I-Ching.”

In Fiction and Prose Poetry, Daniel Stride returns with the Norse-inspired “As Our Power Lessens,” while Eris herself speaks in “The Blessings of a Lesser God” by M. Shedric Simpson. In “The Fates Reserve a Table for Four” by Laurence Raphael Brothers one of those age-old sisters is in for a surprise, while “Fortune’s Path” by Tessa Kjeldsdottir re-imagines the classic “Hansel and Gretel” with an unexpected twist. “The God of the Eighteenth Hole” by C.O. Davidson offers an object lesson in the consequences of mistreating an other-than-human Power, while Joyce Frohn delves into Chinese folklore in “Gold Luck.” A wife confronts her long-absent husband in “The Last Goodbye” by Ngo Binh Anh Khoa, a trickster rodent must make amends in Noah Ross’ “Ratatoskr the Squirrel,” and a woman reflects back on an impossible, life-changing event in “The Right People” by Joanie Brittingham. A prideful people learns the consequences of empire in “The Spoils of War” by Läilä Örken, while the narrator of T. James Johnston’s urban fantasy/horror tale “The Turn of the Wheel” finds himself face-to-face with ancient, malicious magic and human greed. Finally, supernatural compassion runs up against mundane skepticism in “Where the Seagulls Land” by Cullin F. Morgan.

In a special Translation section, Thomas Sudell offers EHS readers a new look at an old Anglo-Saxon text in “The Evil Fortunes of Men: A Translation in Heroic Couplets.”

In Essays, Anghel Valente Guimarães digs into the ancient Egyptian writings in “Demiurgic Fate in Tebtinus Cosmogony.” Dr. Neile Kirk looks into the metals and gems associated with Fortuna and luck in “Fortes Fortuna Iuvat,” while Lyri Ahnam examines the intersection of divination and court politics in “Fortune and Luck in Ancient Assyria.”

We sit down for an Interview with Devan Barlow, author of the fantasy and fairy tale collection, Foolish Hopes and Spilled Entrails: Retellings.

Finally, in Reviews, EHS editor Rebecca Buchanan offers her thoughts on the epic fantasy/romance Sorcery and Small Magics by Maiga Doocy, while Chastity King digs in the mythic retelling Psyche and Eros by Luna McNamara.

As always, feel free to leave any comments or post any questions. And enjoy!