Consulting Swordsman
There are always at least two sides to every story, and usually many more. As historians, we do our best to take all the evidence into account, and tend to rely more on first-person eye-witness accounts than on secondary sources. But I have recently been personally involved in historical eye-witness accounts, and I’m here to … Read more
The first three instalments of my new series, The Swordsman’s Quick Guide, are now live! Just take a look at these covers, by Eleonora Rebecchi (the photo on part 2 is by Nathan Robinson): I am experimenting with using Smashwords to distribute my ebooks; their formatting requirements are arcane in the extreme (they require vintage … Read more
Hail, oh people of the sword or pen! I am sitting in Bar Pult, in Lucca, with a filthy cold, and a head full of snot. Yet today is an excellent day, because today I uploaded all the final files of Swordfighting, for Writers, Game Designers, and Martial Artists to Amazon, Lightning Source, Kobo and Selz; all except … Read more
Five years ago, I got an email from a German friend of mine asking about the German translation of my book, The Swordsman’s Companion. I had no idea what he was talking about, and so he sent me this link. I nearly fell off my chair (this was before I changed to a standing desk, … Read more
I have just this very day completed the first draft of my next longsword book; snappily titled Mastering the Art of Arms vol 3: Longsword Advanced Training. Can you think of a better title? To celebrate, here is one small section of the book, that actually started out in life as a draft blog post, as a … Read more
My friends at Pulp Literature are running another crowdfunding campaign to raise funds for their second year; I have greatly enjoyed the four volumes of short stories, novellas, poetry and artwork that constituted year one. One of their founders, Jennifer Landels, runs the mounted combat program at Academie Duello, and writes and draws swordfighting scenes … Read more
My next book, Swordfighting, is, from a creative perspective, done. It is still being edited, tweaked into better forms, and has yet to be published, but the creative work, by which I mean “writing new material”, is over. I have a bunch of started book projects on my computer, and I am wondering which of … Read more
About a year ago I stoutly declared to a novelist friend that I was not a writer, really, because I made so little of my income from my books. That is no longer true; they are right now bringing in about a third to a half of my actual income after expenses. I made this … Read more
For the first time since starting this blog, I have invited a guest post. This comes from Adelheid Zimmerman, whom I got to know at WMAW last year, and who has come up with a wonderful project which she has successfully crowd-funded. In short, she is producing very high quality copper plate engraved prints of … Read more
This is my 100th blog post, and I have just released my latest book, The Medieval Longsword, to my campaign backers. It will be up on Amazon and elsewhere soon. By way of encouraging reviews, and to soften the blow for all those who missed the campaign, I will give away a free ebook copy … Read more