Sword & Sorcery
I mentioned, or think I did, that I have a sword & sorcery series in the works. There's an interesting story behind how that came to be. Maybe you'll like reading about it.
First, it started because I watched a YouTube reviewer do their watch of Conan: The Barbarian and all it's Arnie goodness. When they were finished, though, I got to wondering how it compared to the vision and works of Robert E. Howard. Five hours later, I've learned a lot about Howard, Moorcock, Fritz Leiber, and C. L. Moore. I've also learned about the tropes for the genre they pretty much created.
Second, in those hours, I kind of began deconstructing those tropes. I hate chainmail bikinis. Even as a guy...wtf?!? I'm also not terribly fond of the whole, "City and civilization bad! Barbarian good!" nonsense. What came out of that was looking into how all the tropes have been subverted.
What came out is an idea for a series of 50,000-65,000 word, punchy short novels or novellas about a high-level courtesan in a Byzantine-style Empire who has assassins show up in her room one night.
The point of this rambling is, keep your eye out for possibilities. You really don't know when inspiration's going to bowl you over like a Chocolate Lab who's happy to see you.
First, it started because I watched a YouTube reviewer do their watch of Conan: The Barbarian and all it's Arnie goodness. When they were finished, though, I got to wondering how it compared to the vision and works of Robert E. Howard. Five hours later, I've learned a lot about Howard, Moorcock, Fritz Leiber, and C. L. Moore. I've also learned about the tropes for the genre they pretty much created.
Second, in those hours, I kind of began deconstructing those tropes. I hate chainmail bikinis. Even as a guy...wtf?!? I'm also not terribly fond of the whole, "City and civilization bad! Barbarian good!" nonsense. What came out of that was looking into how all the tropes have been subverted.
What came out is an idea for a series of 50,000-65,000 word, punchy short novels or novellas about a high-level courtesan in a Byzantine-style Empire who has assassins show up in her room one night.
The point of this rambling is, keep your eye out for possibilities. You really don't know when inspiration's going to bowl you over like a Chocolate Lab who's happy to see you.
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Jasmine
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Oct 02, 2026 05:28PM
ur so right on the chainmail bikini thing! its funny to think that goes back to even the roman era though, like how they characterized amazonians as having a bare breast out to draw back their bow... gooners take over pop culture in every era! hope to read your stories sometime!
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Jasmine wrote: "ur so right on the chainmail bikini thing! its funny to think that goes back to even the roman era though, like how they characterized amazonians as having a bare breast out to draw back their bow...."Somehow, I just saw this.
I'm in a dry spell at the moment, but it seems to be letting up and I have a plan for getting into some habits again, namely doing my derezz and supper when I get home, take a 30-minute walk, and then sit down and write. If after a few minutes I can't write on one of my stories, pull up the "morning pages" document and do some free-form, stream of consciousness writing. We'll see how it goes.
Anyway, I hope you're doing well, and if you ever want to see some of what I'm working on, give a yell. We can work something out as I definitely trust your opinions.
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This will be a home for ramblings and updates on upcoming work. Sometimes I may blog about things that I find interesting, so expect a lot of astronomy and similar in the posts.
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