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This week I help run my Mediieval tournament, with about 80 friends.  We’ll have archery and fighting in and out of armour, music, dance, a lot of cooking and a camp full of ‘pavilions, tents and booths’ to quote Villani.  I promise a full update when I return.    We’re at the Rose House Museum and […]

This is the US cover for ‘Dread Wyrm’ which is out October 15th, just released.  It will tie up a great many of the plots in the traitorson series, although, really, it’s only the halfway point.  There are five books, and as I keep saying, I’m just about done with book 4 (Plague of Swords, […]

I confess to being deeply flattered at the number of site visits when I’m NOT blogging.  (Wait… what does that MEAN?).  However, this is the very center of our reenacting season.  I’ve just been at a seven day tournament in Quebec (that’s me with my daughter Beatrice, and we’re helping squire Aurora Simmons for armoured […]

This evocative illustration, from a manuscript of 1380 or so, probably done at a workshop in Northern Italy (which is much on my mind at the moment anyway, and more below) is, as you no doubt guessed, the 14th c. chivalric imagination of the seizure of Jesus by the authorities of Jerusalem in the Garden […]

Last Friday, I finally completed the seven part epic that Tom Swan and the Siege of Belgrade has become.  In the end, the full story is roughly as long as the Red Knight, or almost 200K words, or roughly as long as Alexander, God of War.  Part 6 will be out June 17, and Part […]

[wpvideo U4P9X9dm] I thought I’d try a different media.  This video was made by my friend Allan Joyner of Allan Joyner Productions.  The music is by Schola Magdalena .  The thoughts are almost entirely my own. And by the way, I’m all to aware of the many inaccuracies the camera catches, despite all of our […]

Aurora SImmons It is not all about weapons and armour. Alright, I know a few of you are reeling in shock, but honestly, the recreation of the past doesn’t actually require weapons and armour at all, and fascinating as some of us may find martial arts, tactics and strategies and the material culture of conflict, […]

Last year, fifteen intrepid readers (seventeen at one point, but that’s a long story) joined me in Athens and spent eleven days touring mainland Greece.  This is us at the Lion Gate at Mycenae. Look, I’m biased, but it was incredible.  For about ten years, my friend Aliki Hamosfakidou of Dolphin Hellas had egged me […]

Why Historical fiction? My journey to become a reader of Historical Fiction is one that started firmly rooted in Fantasy. My early reading of series such as Narnia (The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe etc.) began my exploits in all things magical, before I entered the teenage wasteland and stopped reading for a few […]

http://www.benkane.net/ I love Ben Kane’s books.  I look forward to them eagerly; I get them in hardcover; I’ll eventually meet him and get some of them signed.  (Getting all of them signed seems unlikely, given the decline in international baggage allowance and my near-constant need to get armour into my baggage.  A problem that I […]

As you know, if you follow this blog, I don’t see the boundaries between Historical Fiction and Fantasy as clearly as my readers (or editors) might like. When I set out to design a magic system–oh, about thirty-five years ago, I was heavily influenced by a single book that I had just read–really, two books, […]