David Kudler's Blog, page 4

Which “print” is bundled with – print, eBook, audio combo? Hardback or paperback?If not hardback – is there an option for a hardback, eBook, audio combo?

[…] of historical fiction ��� all for free! Adventure, romance, fantasy ��� and even a book about how Lady Chiyome started her army of kunoichi. (Of course, that book is already free to you as a subscriber! See […]

Kano Is Coming

We now have a release date for the next Seasons of the Sword book: March 1, 2024!

Through raging battles and deadly court intrigue, Risuko must follow a path narrower and less stable than any pine branch. And the consequences should she fail are sharp and hard as rocks below.

The red-and-white disguise of the kunoichi awaits.

Is Risuko ready?

PRE-ORDER YOUR COPY TODAYSee David Kudler Interviewed Live

Author David Kudler will be speaking live online with librarian Charlotte King-Mills about his inspirations, the joys and challenges of writing outside his own lenses, and what keeps pulling his imagination back to the Land of the Rising Sun. He���ll also be taking questions, so have yours ready!

Check out the Zoom interview tomorrow

Wednesday, March 14, at 11:30am Pacific.

Zoom meeting number:  88569641675

Password: 699350

WATCH THE INTERVIEWFREE Historical Fiction

It���s Women���s History Month!

To tide you over while you���re waiting for Kano to arrive, check out over 75 exciting works of historical fiction ��� all for free! Adventure, romance, fantasy ��� and even a book about how Lady Chiyome started her army of kunoichi. (Of course, that book is already free to you as a subscriber! See below)

FIND YOUR NEXT HISTORICAL READ

The post Kano is Coming, Author Talk + FREE Historical Fiction! appeared first on Seasons of the Sword.

Mhm! That kind of writing is perfect for historical fiction in my opinion and I���m looking forward to more of it in bright eyes and kano!

In reply to kiiko.

Thanks so much! Yeah, the idea with all plot points is to have them come from the characters and the setting. Not always easy! And yeah, once I’d established it, it did make for a nice way of marking time, as you say.

Happy holidays! Akemashite omedeto gozai masu!

Here’s the first sneak preview to Kano, the third book in the Seasons of the Sword series!

Obviously, there are spoilers for Risuko and Bright Eyes �����if you haven’t read them yet, you might want to check them out first!

���

Chapter 1: Tiptown

Lady H��j��,��� sighed the Uesugi captain, ���I can���t let you and your party through without an escort���there���s trouble on the other side of the province. We���ve already had to send half of the garrison west, so I can���t spare any men to protect you.���

Mieko gave him her most disgusted Lady Chiyome glare. ���Ruffian.��� She turned to me and Toumi, kneeling to her left in the captain���s office. ���What will Masugu-sama think if we don���t arrive in the capital on time?���

I put my hand in her knee like the supportive lady���s maid that I supposedly was. ���I���m sure the sh��gun will understand if his cousin, your intended, has to change the wedding date.���

When Toumi gave a dismissive snort and muttered, ���Sure he will,��� Mieko covered her face in her hands and began to wail.

I handed her a silk handkerchief marked with the orange, three-triangle mon of her supposed clan.

The Uesugi commander ground his teeth, clearly unused to having to manage high-strung noble brides���or cunning kunoichi. ���My lady������ He closed his eyes. ���Can I get you something, my lady?���

This was the cue we had been waiting for.�� ���Please,��� I simpered, ���if this humble servant might fetch her ladyship some wine, that might help our mistress���s nerves.���

���Yes, yes,��� grumbled the captain. ���The stores are immediately across the courtyard, to the right of the main gate.���

As I bowed, Mieko sniffled, ���Oh, you go with her, Toumi. She���s always getting lost.���

���Yes, my lady,��� said Toumi in a more than passably respectful manner. Really, if you didn���t know her, you might almost have thought she was sweet.

���

Toumi and I scurried out into the courtyard of the Tiptown garrison. It was quiet. Eerily so, since we knew that they were about to be attacked. The soldiers there looked anything but alert.

Emi and Aimaru stepped past a ragged line of marching pikemen to get to us. Like us, their clothes were marked with the H��j�� emblem �����actually, it was simply embroidered over the blank, white disk that marked us as servants of the Full Moon. Emi said, ���Is, um, our mistress all right?���

I expected Toumi to make a joke, but she kept up her respectful maid facade, and so I answered, ���Mieko-sama is very upset. The captain suggested that we fetch her some sake.���

Aimaru nodded solemnly as he and Emi finally got close enough to whisper, ���I���d like to see Mieko-san acting very upset.���

���It���s definitely weird,��� Toumi granted with a shrug.

Feeling that time was tight, I whispered, ���Armory?���

Emi answered, ���To the left of the gate.���

Opposite the storeroom. One sentry at each door.

My heart thrashed at a like a sparrow trying to escape a drying net.

Mieko had talked us through all of this as we rode from the Highfield garrison across enemy lines to Tiptown. I forced the sparrow down my throat and back into my chest. ���So. We get the wine. Then I���ll deal with the gunpowder. Toumi, you keep an eye on the door. Emi, you bring Mieko-sen��� Mieko-sama the sake. And Aimaru������

���Get the horses ready. Just in case.���

They all nodded together.

Emi, Toumi, and Aimaru had all grown up on the streets of the capital. All three of them had done things like this in order to survive���risky, illegal things.

I had climbed up the outside of Lord Imagawa���s castle near our village���but I had done it out of boredom. And while I would have been beaten (or worse) if I���d been caught, I had known I wouldn���t be caught.

Who expected a little girl to climb up the stone walls of a castle?

But this? Walking into a room full of weapons in the middle of an armed fort that we knew was about to face an attack, even if the Uesugi didn���t?

���Come on, Murasaki,��� said Emi, taking my hand and leading me across the courtyard. Aimaru split and sauntered out the gate toward where the horses we���d picked up in Highfield were tied.

When we got to the storeroom, there was a guard at the door, looking thoroughly bored. ���This where the wine���s kept?��� asked Toumi.

When the guard just stared at her, I said, in my meekest servant-girl voice, ���Pardon, sir, but the captain and our lady have commanded us humble servants to bring them sake. If the wine is stored here, may we enter?���

He rolled his eyes, but stepped aside.

The storeroom was huge �����and a mess. Kee Sun would not have approved. Rats scurried as we walked past haphazardly stacked bags of rice and barley toward the back, where sealed jars of sake lay in a pile next to what looked like Uesugi battle flags mixed with winter jackets.

���How can they keep track of anything?��� murmured Emi, her habitual frown deepening.

���Don���t care,��� grunted Toumi, grabbing two jars of sake. ���And they won���t either after the Takeda kick them out.��� She handed one jar to Emi and the other to me. Then she grinned. ���Think I���ll take another of these, since it won���t do them any good.���

���Toumi!��� Emi and I gasped.

She rolled her eyes at us. ���Not for me, baka. You���ll see.���

Emi���s frown now deepened to a scowl, and I���m sure my expression wasn���t much sunnier. However, we needed to keep moving���before our absence was noted. Or I lost my nerve.

As we came back out of the stores, Toumi nodded to the bored soldier and showed him the wine jar. ���Thanks. Our bosses will be really happy.��� Then she flicked her head toward the guard in front of the armory, ���Hey, what���s the name of your friend over there?���

He stared at her again, then gave a grunt and said, ���Joshi. Why?���

Toumi shot him a grin and sloshed her wine. ������Cause I���d like to be happy too, and I thought you and your buddy might want to join me.���

He gave a gruff laugh. ���Are you old enough to be drinking wine?���

���Old enough to want to!��� answered Toumi with a grin that didn���t look right on her face.

���Toumi!��� Emi���s voice was disapproving, and I think she was only partially acting.

���Oh, come on. You two get to go into where Lady Mieko and the captain are having their fun. I get to sit out here. Can���t blame me for taking advantage of the opportunity. Come on.��� She winked at us and, as we walked away, said to the bored guard over her shoulder. ���Be right back!���

���Are you sure this is a good idea?��� I whispered.

���Hey, I���m not stupid,��� Toumi whispered back. ���Not gonna actually drink any of it. It���s just like those endless drinking games Sachi-sensei made us play with water, right? And it���s the best way of getting you into the armory, Mouse.���

���All right,��� I conceded.

Emi added, ���Be careful.���

���Sure. I might almost think you care,��� she said with a grin that was more like her���knife-sharp and dangerous.

���We do,��� I answered.

Rather than answer me, Toumi called to the guard in front of the armory, ���Hey, Joshi-san!��� When the guard blinked at her, she gave her sake jar a wet shake. ���Your pal at the storerooms was planning on showing me some drinking games, and said you might like to join us.���

He tried to look stern, but licked his lips. ���Zashiki said that?���

���Yup. Said you knew some fun ones.���

���Oh, sure.��� He smiled, and I realized with a start that he didn���t look any older than Aimaru. With a laugh, he abandoned his post and joined Toumi crossing the courtyard toward the much-less-bored-looking Zashiki.

I was about to point out that Toumi was actually frighteningly good at that when Emi whispered, ���No one���s looking. Go in.���

And so before I could think about it, I moved my wine jar to my left hand, slid open the door to the armory, and stepped through.

Emi slid the door behind me, no doubt heading off to deliver the remain jar of wine to Mieko, and I was alone in a room full of the instruments of death and destruction.

The ���armory��� at the Full Moon was just a corner of the storeroom that held a dozen long-bladed glaives,�� a half-dozen swords, a handful of bows, stacks of arrows, some helmets, and a few suits of armor. Plenty to defend Lady Chiyome���s school for shrine maidens �����and assassins.

The Tiptown garrison���s armory was intended to supply a small army and defend the western half of Dark Letter Province from invasion by the Takeda.

Where the food and goods in the storeroom had been piled haphazardly, here the soldiers��� equipment was arranged with the precision of a scribe���s tools: neat stacks of long katanas, short wakazashis, and even shorter daggers, sheathed, but still deadly. Pikes and glaives, long and short bows, bushels of arrows, mounds of neatly piled armor parts���helmets, gauntlets, chest plates, bracers for the arms, pauldrons for the shoulders, sabatons for the feet, greaves for the legs, and more.

And in the very back corner, on wooden pegs all of the way to the high ceiling, perhaps forty muskets, and below them, the things that made those strange looking contraptions of metal and wood lethal: boxes that I knew must contain bullets and thirty or so sealed ceramic canisters marked ������. Gunpowder.

Captain Yamagata, the Takeda commander of the garrison at Highfield, had simply told us to neutralize the Uesugi guns. He hadn���t cared how.

Earlier that day, riding from the Takeda garrison to the Uesugi one, Mieko had asked us how we would do such a thing.

Toumi had answered very simply, ���Use a flint. Boom.���

Mieko had actually laughed at that. ���True. That would be extremely effective. It would also probably kill whichever of us managed to do it, and would put the Uesugi on high alert, which Yamagata-san and his men would rather we not do, since they are marching only a few hours behind us. Any other ideas?���

Aimaru had suggested stealing them, but had granted with a smile that there�� probably too much to take, and someone would certainly notice.

Emi had suggested smashing the jars, but Toumi had pointed out the sound would certainly attract notice, and I added that they still might be able to use some of the powder.

Mieko had nodded in approval, and then said, ���Risuko-chan, you grew up near a castle. Did you ever watch the musketeers training?���

I nodded. I���d loved to spy on them from the pine trees near our village, watching them fire at targets set against the base of the cliff below the castle.

���Did you ever watch them when it was raining?���

I���d frowned as I rocked unsteadily on the back of the Takeda charger. ���Yes, once.��� I visualized the chaotic scene. ���They were practicing, when we were hit by a sudden shower. They went scurrying, covering everything with tarps and umbrellas!���

���Yes. I will tell you all a secret about gunpowder: once it gets wet, it can���t ever be used. Even a tea-cup���s worth of liquid poured into a canister of gunpowder will turn it into so much dirt.���

���Oh!��� I could see what she was suggesting. ���So we get their powder wet, and make it so they can���t use their guns, like Yamagata-san asked, and it doesn���t make any noise!���

Emi jumped in, saying, ���And they won���t even know what���s happened until it���s too late.���

I opened my sake jar, and then took the lid off of the first canister of gunpowder. The smell was an odd combination���the bit of the familiar scent of charcoal and a touch of the rotten-egg scent of the hot springs above the Full Moon. I poured what seemed like a tea cup of wine in, put the lid back on the canister, shook it a couple of times, and moved to the next canister.

Do no harm, my father had begged me as he walked away that last time, toward Lord Imagawa and his doom.

Well, I wasn���t hurting anyone, was I? In fact, I was making it so the musketeers couldn���t hurt anyone.

I was also making it so they couldn���t defend themselves. I wasn���t sure whether my father would have approved or not.

I was very conscious of how long it was taking me to sabotage each container of black powder. I tried to be as quick as I could while still being careful, not letting any of the powder spill.

I was putting the lid back on the last canister when I heard the door to the armory slide open.

���You really don���t need to show me! I believe you!��� Toumi���s voice, which she was trying to keep as light and jocular as before, had an edge of panic that set off my own fear like a spark to unspoiled gunpowder.

���No, no, no,��� said Zashiki, the storeroom guard, sounding as if he���d had more than a tea-cup���s worth of sake himself. ���You must see, we have over forty muskets, the Takeda wouldn���t dare attack us here.���

���Tha���s right,��� the young guard, Joshi, slurred, ���they���d be idiots t���even try!���

Hearing their footsteps, I realized that I had little time to hide, and so, without thinking, I did what I do best: I climbed.

���

What do you think? How will Risuko get out of this sticky situation?

Can one girl save a nation?With Japan���s future in the balance, Risuko may recover the Kano clan���s honor ��� or she may destroy it forever

Lord Takeda has sent Risuko, Emi, and Toumi on a mission to the capital. The road is dangerous. The destination is treacherous.�� Risuko ��� the girl who just likes to climb ��� must make a choice that will have repercussions not only for Risuko���s life and those of her friends, but possibly for all of Japan.

In this thrilling third book in the Seasons of the Sword, she encounters old friends, new enemies, and a strange boy from a far-off land called��Portugal. Through raging battles and deadly court intrigue, Risuko must follow a path narrower and less stable than any pine branch. And the consequences should she fail are sharp and hard as rocks below.

The red-and-white disguise of the��kunoichi��awaits.

Is Risuko ready?

Seasons of the Sword:Risuko��(Winter)Bright Eyes��(Spring)Kano��(Summer ��� coming soon!)Autumn ��� coming soon!

The post Tiptown (Kano, Chapter 1) appeared first on .

���To boldly go where no one has gone before!���

I���ve always been a huge Star Trek fan. Watched all the original series episodes and even the animated series over and over as a kid. Went to Trek cons as a young teen. Had a pair of Vulcan ears and a tribble.

But one thing made me grit my teeth every time the show came on.

To Boldly Split Infinitives

Every time William Shatner and later Patrick Stewart���s voice would come on for the stirring intro, I���d mutter under my breath, ������To go boldly.������

The split infinitive ���to boldly go��� offended my sensibilities. I was the son of an English teacher and a nascent grammar nerd. How could I not take umbrage?

Later, my wife and daughters would laugh at me ��� though both girls ended up as grammar nerds on their own. But I stuck to my guns.

Why? you ask. What���s the big deal? What���s a split infinitive and, more importantly, why should I care?

Well, the infinitive form of a verb is (believe it or not) a noun phrase made up of the word ���to��� followed by a verb. It���s the most basic form of any verb. ���To be.��� ���To run.��� ���To cogitate.��� ���To go.���

Splitting an infinitive means adding words between the ���to��� and the verb. ���To generally be.��� ���To carelessly if somewhat giddily ��� though never on Thursdays ��� run.���

���To boldly go.���

Why does it matter? Allow me a quick history lesson, if you don���t mind.

A Brief History of the Free-for-All That Is the English Language

Most of English grammar was made up in the 18th and 19th centuries, an attempt to impose order on a bastard language with lots of flexibility and few set rules.

Syntax (roughly put, the relationships between different parts of a sentence) was one of the few places where English was in fact somewhat consistent, so that���s where those first grammar nerds started, trying to impose Latin-like logic into the sprawling chaos that was English. Spelling? Vocabulary? Fugedaboudit. Let���s try to get the word-order thing straightened out.

English is largely uninflected. It has almost no arbitrarily gendered words (and even fewer in the past fifty years) or cases (aside from the possessive ��� this period is when we got the rules about when an apostrophe S should be added and when just an apostrophe sufficed). Words can change their function effortlessly, with nouns becoming verbs or adjectives becoming nouns. ���He skied the ball.��� ���They parked on the green.���

This flexibility is both a strength and a potential weakness. English verb conjugation is extremely simple, at least compared to most European languages. There���s little to distinguish the noun form of a word from the adjective, verb, or interjection form. Adverbs end in ���-ly��� ��� usually. Prepositions and conjunctions are few in number, and so easy to identify. Usually. Interjections stand in their own. But nouns, verbs, and adjectives? No chance. And some words get used as ���helpers��� in certain grammatical constructions.

So the grammarians focused on syntax, and especially on the ���helper��� words we use in place of inflection. Some examples of helpers are the ���to��� in the infinitive form of verbs, ���could��� in the conditional, or ���to be��� in participles.

Style vs Grammar Rules

The idea those first grammar Nazis developed is to put all helpers and modifiers as close as possible to the word they���re modifying to avoid ambiguity and confusion. The general rule with helper words is to place them immediately before the main verb, while adverbs and such get placed just before or, if need be, just after the new compound verb.

If you dump modifiers between the helper and the main verb, confusion threatens. Tossing words between the ���to��� and the verb make it potentially unclear what purposes the words are serving.

That���s the idea. Split infinitives pave the road to chaos and muddy language.

Having said all of that, I think the injunction against splitting infinitives almost certainly falls under the heading of style rather than grammatical rule. That is, it���s a matter of choice ��� as long as you make the choice consciously, clearly, and consistently.

Most people split infinitives and such with abandon in their everyday usage. But in more formal language, one tries to be precise, and so, as with the passive voice (for example), many writers and editors try to avoid splitting infinitives needlessly.

However, the Chicago Manual of Style (the Bible of American book publishing) decided recently to allow splitting infinitives ���to add emphasis or to produce a natural sound��� (CMS 5:168 ��� https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/...). So there���s that.

So��� I CAN Boldly Go?

As an example of what the CMS means by ���natural sound���: replacing ���to boldly go��� with ���to go boldly��� in the Star Trek intro would ruin the scansion of what is essentially a lovely, ringing line of iambic pentameter (with a not-unusual dactyl in the fourth foot):

To boldly go where no one has gone before!

So Star Trek captains will continue ���to boldly go.��� And I���ll continue to grumble. But I���ll just have to gradually (if not always graciously and certainly not gracefully) deal with it.

The post ���To Boldly Go���: Splitting Infinitives and Why You Should (or Shouldn���t) Care appeared first on Stillpoint Digital Press.

I tell yeh, Bright Eyes. Men and women? A bloody mess. Every time. ��� Kee Sun on sex and gender, Risuko

Is “toxic masculinity” just a way of saying men are toxic?

I get asked a lot about why I decided to write about young women in my Seasons of the Sword novels. There are lots of reasons.

But an online conversation I was part of recently made one of them very clear to me.

In the conversation, someone argued that “toxic masculinity” was feminist code for the assertion that all men are bad/toxic.

No. No. No.

Masculinity ��� Men

Masculinity isn’t the same as male ��� however we may define that term. Masculinity refers not to men as individuals or as a group, but to certain behaviors that societies associate with “being a man.” In Shakespeare’s England, being masculine meant wearing tights, painting their nails, and carrying a sword. In medieval Japan, being a man (of the samurai or daimyo classes) meant wearing robes, writing poetry… and carrying a sword.

Today, societies hold many different views of what constitutes masculinity. Some of them are positive, some are negative, but all are completely arbitrary. They have nothing to do with chromosomes, with physiology. They’re codes of behavior, in other words.

Toxic Masculinity

American poet and “masculist” Robert Bly

Toxic masculinity is actually a term that originated in the so-called Men���s Movement started by Robert Bly and others back in the 1980s.

The phrase refers to a particular set of social rules about what a ���real man��� can and can���t do that are destructive ��� toxic ��� to men themselves, to their partners, to their families, and to society at large.

Big boys don���t cry.Real men don���t ask for help.Real men provide for those around them ��� letting others provide is a sign of weakness.Real men never show weakness.Real men do; women and children are done for (and to).Real men don���t have time for talk.Real men don���t ask for directions.Real men don���t express affection. Especially to other men.Real men don���t wear pink. Or own anything that might look pretty, girly, or soft. Or eat quiche. Or dance ballet.Real men don���t admit failure. EVER.Etc., etc., etc.

Our culture imposes all of those restrictions and expectations ��� there���s nothing innate about any of them. They are, in the current terminology, social constructs.

And since each of them runs contrary to nature ��� because each of us has moments of weakness, each of us needs help sometimes, emotion overwhelms us all sometimes, some of us like to wear nice clothes ��� they leave men feeling like failures. Which is humiliating. Which causes us to become defensive and lash out ��� at ourselves and those around us.

These constrictions constitute a crushing burden that poisons our self-image and interactions with those around us. That���s why the image of masculinity they project is toxic.

My Father and the Non-toxic Masculine

I was lucky. My dad was raised by his mother and grandmother (his dad died when he was two ��� not at all lucky). They raised him as a nurturant, caring, talk-first man, atypical for his generation (born in 1932 ��� he���d have turned 90 last year). He and our mother raised me and my brother in a similar mold.

Since he had no model for what it meant to be a man, he turned to popular fiction and movies – especially Westerns. His idols came from John Wayne movies and books by Louis Lamour, where the hero was ALWAYS strong, silent, and solved problems with a six-shooter or his fists. Later in life, he loved samurai movies, which sprang from a similar ethos.

Watching The Seven Samurai and the Hollywood remake, The Magnificent Seven, with my father remains one of my favorite memories

But the fact of the matter was that as much as he aspired to the strong-and-silent ideal, it wasn���t who he was. At all. He talked about his feelings a LOT. He relied on my mother as much as she relied on him. And he was fortunate to have grown up in a household that didn���t enforce all of the soul-crushing rules that many American men were and are raised to live by.

Okay: he was never good at admitting failure, but that sprang from the fact that he felt he had to live up to his family���s American Dream expectations. No one���s perfect. But he admitted that weakness, even as he struggled with it to the end of his life. And his expressions of affection and concern could sometimes run toward the stifling extreme referred to in our society as ���mothering.��� Which both my brother and I sometimes bristled at. But that didn’t stop him from being a wonderful father, husband, and man.

In any case, he was a poster child for the kind of man who wasn���t the strong, silent type.

That was his great strength.

So no, ���toxic masculinity��� isn���t a way of saying that ���men are toxic.���

It���s a way of saying that certain social constraints that we place on men are toxic, both to the men and to those around them.

Risuko, Femininity, and Masculinity

I’ve talked before about how the theme of gender has affected the way I write the Seasons of the Sword books. In Risuko, our protagonist wanders across a war-torn Japan, but most of the characters she encounters are female. In Bright Eyes, two armies of men invade Lady Chiyome’s sanctuary, the Full Moon, so there’s a really different gender balance.

But the toxicity of gender stereotypes infects both books, just as it affects both men and women in all ages.

In Risuko’s Japan, women are expected to be gentle and decorous. Men are expected to be strong and honor-bound.

But obviously, no one can behave as expected all of the time.

And having such strong divisions between the sexes allows people to take advantage of the conventions.

Some men in the books feel free to bully the women, certain the women can’t and won’t fight back. Of course, they’re wrong to be certain, as it turns out. That’s because Lady Chiyome created her kunoichi army knowing that no one expects a group of deadly blossoms to be lethal assassins, brutal bodyguards, and cold-blooded spies.

When expected gender roles become too constraining, they become toxic.

And when they camouflage a threat, they can prove lethal.

The post Risuko, My Father, and Toxic Masculinity appeared first on Seasons of the Sword.

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