Podcast Tag: writing

The Sword Guy Podcast

Listen in as Guy interviews a wide variety of interesting swordspeople and historians from around the world. Learn more about the practical, the tactical, the theoretical and the just plain awesome from a diverse group of voices.

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Podcast Tag: writing

Damon Young

Episode 205

Salute before you cross swords with Damon Young

My guest today, Damon Young, is an Australian philosopher, author and martial artist. He has written 14 books or so, including Philosophy in the Garden, Distraction, and On Getting Off: Sex and Philosophy. He has also edited a couple of books on philosophy and martial arts, such as Engagement: Philosophy and the Martial Arts, and Martial Arts and Philosophy: Beating and Nothingness, perhaps my favourite title. His latest work is Immortal Gestures, Journeys in […]
Sebastian de Castell

Episode 203

Writing Great Sword Fights, with Sebastien de Castell

It’s a welcome return for a previous guest, the brilliant writer Sebastien de Castell. His first published novel was Traitor’s Blade in 2014. Since then he has published the Greatcoats Quartet, the Spellslinger YA fantasy series, The Malevolent Seven and his latest Play of Shadows. He also has eight more books under contract, so there are plenty more to come! Sebastien has written some of my favourite sword fights in all of literature, so […]
Roland Allen

Episode 201

The Notebook and a Zibaldone Salad with Roland Allen

Roland Allen is the author of The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper. The book is about the development of the notebook (i.e. a book you write in yourself) in European history, and it covers everything from the development of paper as a cheaper thing to write on than vellum, to wax tablets, to Italian accounting practices, to Leonardo da Vinci’s famous notebooks, to Darwin, to the modern Moleskine and where it actually […]
From Your Head to Their Hands by Guy WIndsor

Episode 183

Want to write a training manual? How to write training manuals for historical martial artists, with Guy Windsor

This episode is an unusual one because there’s no interview. Instead, it’s an extended sample from my new audiobook, From Your Head to Their Hands: How to write, publish, and market training manuals for Historical Martial Artists. The book is designed to be short, clear and to the point, with zero fluff! Listen to this episode to get a good idea of what’s in the book. The chapters from the audiobook that this episode […]
elizabeth chadwick

Episode 180

Writing Historical Novels: the Facts and the Fiction, with Elizabeth Chadwick

Elizabeth Chadwick is an award winning best-selling writer of historical fiction. She has been writing since she was a teenager, but it took many years and many books before she was finally published. She has had great success since, so it’s a good example for aspiring writers out there to keep going! In our conversation we talk about some of the historical figures which feature in Elizabeth’s novels, including William Marshal, Eleanor of Aquitaine, […]

Episode 172

Business, Chivalry, and Life-or-Death Training, with Jason Kingsley

One of our most listened-to guests is back on the show! Jason Kingsley OBE is the co-founder and CEO of the games company Rebellion Developments, which also owns 2000 AD, and he’s the man behind the YouTube channel Modern History TV, starring Warlord, which goes into depth of detail regarding many aspects of medieval life, most notably combat and horsemanship, but also aspects of daily life. We catch up on how Warlord is doing […]
Jessica Finley

Episode 167

Medieval wrestling and making sense of the Liechtenauer swamp, with Jessica Finley

Medieval wrestling and Liechtenauer expert Jessica Finley will be familiar to many of you from her two previous appearances on The Sword Guy. (Episode 1 and episode 56). We’re catching up today after my recent trip to Jessica’s training space in Kansas where we filmed the new Abrazare online course. You can find the course at guywindsor.net/abrazare23. In our conversation, we talk about medieval wrestling, and compare and contrast the approaches of Fiore and […]
Katie and Guy

Episode 153

Behind the Scenes at The Sword Guy, with Katie Mackenzie

It’s the 150th(ish) episode! So to mark this momentous occasion we’ve got a guest who can’t think of any reason at all why she would want someone to run at her with a pointy sword. Katie Mackenzie is the organising principle behind the show, as well as an excellent author’s assistant. She is an author herself, of the very approachable, Easy Fitness for Quitters: How to Become a Happy Exerciser. And she wrote these […]

Episode 131

The episode in which Guy gets challenged to a duel, with Auri Poso

Auri Poso is a long time student of Guy’s and one of the first teachers he ever trained. Auri now runs her own school, the Gladiolus School of Arms in Helsinki/Espoo, Finland. In our conversation we talk about Star Wars, which leads to a disagreement about Luke Skywalker needing a good slap. Whether lightsabers would be a suitable weapon to use in the ensuing duel between Guy and Auri causes another difference of opinion… […]

Episode 127

From Katanas to Creating the Metaverse, with Neal Stephenson

Neal Stephenson is a best-selling author, futurist, tech geek and swordsman whose works include Cryptonomicron, Seveneves, The Diamond Age, Snow Crash. He has also co-written several other books and graphic novels which we discuss in this episode. His latest book, Termination Shock goes into depth and detail about Sikh martial arts, which he had to research during the Covid lockdowns. Of course, Neal’s main claim to fame is that he wrote the preface to […]