SEPTEMBER '24: Grab your partner round and round, throw them gently to the ground
HEY DOLL WHAT'S GOING ON WITH THE ENDSONG?
The Sunforge has been out for a month! Except it's been out for two months, except where it hasn't. I don't think we planned a staggered international release but that's how it played out, and at time of writing it's been out for aaaalmost a month absolutely everywhere (and out for two months in the US).
The months around release are always pretty stressful. I've been a bit of a mess. Reading a book is a slow process and that means there's this delayed reception –unlike something like music or film, you don't really get an idea of what readers think until significantly after launch, sometimes years. The response to The Sunforge is just beginning to coalesce, and it seems largely positive, and I'm grateful for it.
My author friends will yell at me but I've gotta admit I've been checking in on the Goodreads rating every so often and watching it swing back and forth, and swing a little less as each subsequent review becomes a lower % of the total. The Dawnhounds started to slow down between 3.6–3.7, The Sunforge is slowing down between 4.1–4.2. It feels good, affirmation that the work I've been putting into my craft is paying off.
I'm finishing up the first draft of book 3, aiming to have it done this week. Don't get too excited, it sucks, it's only 60k words and it's stuffed with placeholders, but I'm a big proponent of trash drafting, just screaming I'LL FIX IT LATER then going back and letting the actual book emerge through revisions. I'll be done trashing in a week, then I'm going to set to crafting that trash into something beautiful. All I can say about it for now is that everybody in the cast is doing Annihilation, except Wajet who has found himself in Post Captain.
Elsewhere in Endsongland, I wrote about trying to hold onto a non-USian narrative voice while mostly serving US readers and it seemed to deeply resonate with people. You can check it out (for free!) here:
Sascha Stronach
YOU GOT ANYTHING ELSE GOING ON?
My YA/MG set in a fantastical Pacific is still out on sub, drifting on ocean currents, maybe one day to return to Havaiki, who knows.
I have my next adult fiction project lined up. While I get stuck on the Book 3 draft I go back and tinker with my Scrivener doc for the fun new book (why is the book you want to write the most is the one you're not working on? 😭😭😭) and I've been writing exploratory scenes trying to figure out the two main PoVs' voices. The book's a very conscious attempt to strip things down – I love The Dawnhounds but I feel like it has a bad case of First Novel Syndrome, where I had to put in every single idea that occured to me, and I'm working on paring things back and trying to build something that holds together more tightly.
I've been jokingly saying it's DS9 all the way down and I don't think it would be entirely unfair to see something of Garak and Bashir in it. Garak and Bashir if the Cardassians retook Bajor but let the Federation keep DS9, when the daughter of a Cardassian general is killed aboard the station and they're both trying to solve her murder before the other one does.
Also they're women and it's a fantastical 17th century city that's Ottoman Athens by way Interregnum London by way of Wellington (because it's always a little but Wellington with me).
Cat and mouse, lots of sneaking around in claustrophic hallways, lots of listening at doors, lots of portentous conversations over games of backgammon. I'm trying to write matchlocks and courtly intrigue and sapphic tension while calling back to the more hard-edged fantasy that influenced me as a teenager: Gene Wolfe, Joe Abercrombie, Scott Lynch, and also Le Carré and Raymond Chandler and the Cold War spy thriller. It's going to be a hard tonal balance to strike, I think this manuscript could take a long time, but I'm really excited about it.
YOU'RE MEANT TO TALK ABOUT SWORDS
Oh shit, right, yeah. Okay so one thing nobody in fantasy every seems to understand is measure. Measure is the distance between two fencers. Different manuals and different weapons will have different ideas of where this is formed, but in sabre it's usually the distance between each fencer's back foot. Measure is one of the single most important things going on in every sword fight, it's something you're constantly keeping track of, changing, trying to trick your opponent into misreading.
A tighter measure means less distance for swords to cross before you hit your opponent, which means you have less time to react to incoming blows. The closer you are, the faster you need to be, and since the goal of a swordfight is to stab without being stabbed, fencers tend to a keep a fairly wide measure – you want to be close enough to hit, but far enough that you can parry a counterattack in good time.
'Good time' here is often called tempo which ... oh my god it's its own whole can of worms, every manual defines tempo differently, there is no definition of tempo that won't make somebody yell at you. I heard it called The Distance Between Two Silences and that's as good a definition as any, and as Capo Ferro notes, that distance in time is related to the distance in measure.
So there's a pose you see in a lot of fantasy art, where two characters have bound their swords together and are standing face-to-face, you know the one.
You love it, and I'm here to kill it.
But bear with me, because there's a version where you get everything you want out of it without making sword nerds cry. So what's the problem?
If you're that close, you should be dead already. This is a wacky measure. If you get this close to an opponent, even odds they just pull out a dagger and stab you.
I have been there though. Usually when I misread an opponent, or they misread me, or both, and we lunge at the same time, and suddenly we're locked up and right in each others' faces. You know what happens next? You know what I never see but is such narrative and character dynamite?
You wrestle.
You want to lock down your opponent's sword arm while getting yours free. Look at this, hot right?
Now imagine if Anne Hathaway was white-knuckling Audra McDonald's wrist trying to hold the sword at bay. In a real sword fight she'd be grabbing and this is where I bang my personal drum: reality is often hotter and cooler than the fantasy version we create.
Destreza (a style of Spanish fencing) is built around movements of conclusion, where you intentionally close ground on your opponent then disarm them by grabbing and twisting their wrist or forearm. It's their contention that it's the most noble way to fence, to defeat a man without needing to strike a blow. They'll methodically close on their opponent, shortening measure while keeping their guard up, then go for the grab.
Okay we gotta go back to measure for a minute. I'm using Thibault's instances here, this is just from one fencing manual, but I've found it's a really good framework to get your head around measure.
FIRST INSTANCE is when the tip of your sword just reaches the guard on your opponent's. Illustrated in the book here. It's possible to hit an opponent from first instance but it's going to require a step or a lunge and it comes out slower. If you want to play defence, keep your opponent at first instance.
Take a step forward, and you're in SECOND INSTANCE. You should be able to touch your opponent without stepping further. You're in the danger zone but (assuming an equally matched opponent) you're still able to respond to their plays in good time. I'm struggling to find an illustration, so here's Aussie rapier fencer (and GOAT) Mosh Hewson doing a demo:
Take another step foward and you're at THIRD INSTANCE.
Third instance is a really fucking dangerous place to be. Look at where the points of their swords are, that's lethal blow range, running right through the head of chest. All you need to do is straighten your arm out and you kill them instantly. Thibault doesn't want you moving from second to third unless you've got your opponent's sword locked up with your own. If you're at third instance, there are three options:
1) somebody is about to die
2) somebody already has
3) GRAPPLE TIME BABYYYYY
Exclude your opponent's blade with your own, then go for the grab. It might be because you both lunged and locked the other person's sword out, it might be part of some methodical plan, but the basics are the same: use your sword to keep their sword out of your face, and grab 'em. Some favourites of mine:
If you weren't looking at that last one going NOW KISS then congratulations you're not me. I'm banging my drum again: reality is often hotter and cooler than the fantasy version we create.
Ladies, gentlemen, and those that lie betwist: write better swordfights; start grabbing each other.
FINAL THOUGHTS?
Hey did you know that you can rate The Sunforge on Amazon, Goodreads, or your review site of choice and it makes publishers like me more and makes it easier for me to secure bigger advances? Like 30 seconds, costs you nothing, means the world to me:
https://www.amazon.com/Sunforge-Sascha-Stronach/dp/1982187077
Sascha Stronach
Also please let me know any fencing topics you want to know more about! Also also if you like my writing, tell your mates! Most authors live or die on word of mouth. I would be nowhere without people shouting about me online and I love all of you.
Keep writing, keep wrestling, keep being wonderful.
Peace,
Alexandra 'Sascha' Stronach
