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Guy's Blog

Guy frequently keeps this blog updated with thoughts, challenges, interviews and more!

Category: Books and Writing

I am delighted to announce that the National Fencing Museum's copy of Alessandro Senese's rapier treatise from 1660 is now available to download from here. The download includes a zip file of edited jpgs, and a pdf for handy reference. If you need the full-res raw files at 25mb/page, email me and I'll send you a link.

The book is in beautiful condition, and is perfectly legible throughout (assuming you read Italian and Latin). Most of the technical content is in Italian, though there is a long section at the end in Latin with some very interesting illustrations:

I think the text means “figure that shows the theory of wounding the left side of the enemy”, but my Latin is shockingly bad, so don't take my word for it.

This is a wonderful little book- and it's yours to do what you want with. These images come from the photo shoot I did at the museum with Malcolm Fare and James Hester, and are released into the public domain. Note though that the more money they generate through your voluntary donations, the faster we will get the rest of the images we shot edited and out into your waiting hands.

It's here.

Last year my friends at Freelance Academy Press boldly crowdfunded a publishing project: reproducing in facsimile and translation all four of the extant Fiore manuscripts. I supported the campaign, of course, and my copy of the first volume arrived some time ago. Flowers of Battle, Volume 1.

I left it unopened for a couple of months because a) I was scared that it might not live up to expectations and b) I wanted to make sure I had a good chunk of uninterrupted time to go through it.

Oh my. What a book. Greg Mele and Tom Leoni have produced a lasting monument to Fiore, and a fabulous resource for all scholars of our arts.

If you are a Fiore scholar, you simply have to have it. If you study other medieval martial arts, you really should have it. 

Buy it here. Go now, and don’t come back until you’ve bought it. It's only $125, and worth twice that, at least. Eat cheap food and don't drink alcohol for a month and there's your cash.

Welcome back.

The book comprises three sections: Fiore dei Liberi and His World, The Art of Arms, and the facsimile, transcription and translation of the Getty ms.

The first section is a historical tour de force, which includes biographies of Fiore, Niccolo d’Este, and Galeazzo da Mantoa, and detailed discussion of the weapons, armour, clothing, and duelling culture of the time. It’s fantastic; this section alone justifies buying the book.

The next section is an overview of the manuscript, which for me is perhaps the least useful part of this book, but will serve the less experienced very well. Yes, those of you familiar with my interpretations will find some things there that I would disagree with, but so what? It’s a thoughtful and in-depth overview of the manuscript as seen through the eyes of a very experienced practitioner.

The facsimile, translation, and transcription are very good; the translation itself is by Tom Leoni, and it is the cleanest, most accurate published translation out there. You have to have it, even if you can read the Italian. The transcription is helpful to have, though it’s rendered in a font that mimics the handwriting; it’s perfectly clear to read, but it’s not as instantly legible as it might be. I have not checked the entire transcription for accuracy, but the parts I have looked at have been flawless. My biggest quibble would be with the layout.

As you can see, on each page you get the manuscript folio on one side, and the transcription and translation on the other. This makes the entire book easy to refer to, but it interferes with the visual presentation of the manuscript. In these examples, these two pages should both be visible at once, as together they show the ‘five things’ you should know regarding the dagger. I think Fiore was careful about many of the two-page spreads we see in the book, and that element is lost in this edition.

I think the perfect approach is the one taken in the Royal Armouries ms I.33 by Extraordinary Editions: a perfect facsimile in one volume, and a translation and transcription in another, overlaid on the images as you can see:

I think I understand why they did it though, and there are always compromises to be made. Fortunately, you can get a very reasonably-priced bound facsimile of the manuscript to go with this glorious book. But if you don't have Flowers of Battle yet, save your pennies and buy that first. Clear?

There’s one thing that I ought to give you some background on. I am honoured to have been included in the acknowledgments, with the following:

Guy Windsor, for challenging our interpretations and forcing us to rethink them. … victory is not always ours.

Way back when, maybe 2003, Tom Leoni got it into his head that I am the spitting image of Stewie, from Family Guy. And pretty much every time we’ve met he’s asked me to say “Victory is mine!”. 

So this acknowledgment in the book is a continuation of a joke that has been running for about 15 years. I must say though, that when it comes to this book, victory is most certainly theirs. Bravo, gentlemen, bravo.

I get a lot of stuff done, as you have probably noticed. A while ago, a kind soul took a few of my blog posts on time management and my approach to getting stuff done and put them together into a pdf. I was touched, and enjoyed the idea of it, but didn't do anything much about it until last week when I took those articles, and a few more, and formatted them together into a nice little ebook mostly because, as a productive person with good systems in place, I had time on my hands.

You can find the book on my Gumroad shop here and on Amazon here.

It's called Guy on Time.

As the blurb says:

“This short book brings together half a dozen of Guy's articles on productivity, time management, and generally getting shit done. It is short (about 12,000 words) because if you are pressed for time, do you really want a great big doorstop of a book to get through before getting on with your life?

NOTE: you can read all of these articles for free on his blog. But do you have the time to sift through all of the sword-fighting and other stuff on there to find these?”

I hope you find this useful! Though as you're right here on the blog, you could probably go looking for the articles yourself.

Of course,  I could provide a list of links to them, but that would take me time, and save you a pitiful £1.99, so I'm not going to. See how it works? One of the most important things when it comes to time management is to value your own time.

If you are time rich and cash poor, go looking. If you are cash rich and time poor, buy the book. It works either way.

Are there any other topics you'd like my thoughts on? Guy on XYZ? Let me know in the comments…

As you may know I've been working on a second edition of Veni Vadi Vici for several years, as part of my PhD work. I have completely rewritten the book, so much so that it has been re-titled as The Art of Sword Fighting in Earnest.

It is now available to buy in glorious full-colour hardback, which includes a facsimile of the manuscript, a new introduction, and a completely updated translation.

I made the translation available for free on gumroad; if you missed it, it's here.

You can order the hardback from any bookshop, or on Amazon. It's expensive though ($65) because of the whole full-colour hardback thing.

I am working on a black-and-white paperback version which will be about a third the price, and won't have the facsimile built in. Expect that to be out in a few months.

If you have already bought Veni Vadi Vici, then I will be very happy to email you a link to download the 180mb colour pdf file of the new book. I think it's only fair, as the new book was necessary to correct the errors in the first one. You shouldn't have to pay extra to get the corrected text. Just send me an email and I'll send you a download link for the print file. If you have friends that have Veni Vadi Vici please let them know that they can get the new book in pdf for free.

My security-minded friends will be having conniptions at the complete lack of suspiciousness in this approach. Yes, you could email me and lie about having bought Veni Vadi Vici, and I would still send you the pdf. Why? Because:

a) I trust my readers

b) if you need the book that badly and are so hard up you can't buy it and are willing to lie to me to get it, then firstly, you should probably read my book on ethics, but secondly I'd rather you had the book than stewed in horrid ignorance

c) the cost in thought, time, and suspicious-mindedness necessary to create some kind of checking system is not worth the possibility that I might be doing myself out of a few book sales

d) I think it's a good book. People who get the free pdf are more likely to go and buy the book in hardcopy.

At the end of the day, my fans won't cheat me. What my non-fans do doesn't matter.

UPDATE: This book hit #1 on Amazon… in the category “Medieval Literary Criticism”. So what? So it's a really good idea to know what categories to put your book into. It is now, despite having sold perhaps 10 copies, forever and for all time a “Bestseller”.

My book on Vadi's manuscript De Arte Gladiatoria Dimicandi is available now as The Art of Sword Fighting in Earnest.

As with my first attempt at translating this manuscript I have released the translation for free, under a creative commons attribution 4.0 licence. This means you can do whatever you want with it, provided you give me credit for doing the work.

The rest of the book includes a detailed introduction, a practical commentary, and a glossary.

You can find the free translation here: https://gum.co/sXBJh

I'm making it available through my Gumroad account rather than a direct download because that way generous souls can pay something for it if they wish.

“This should be the core book in every HEMA practitioner’s library”

Comments like this are what authors live for. My new book The Theory and Practice of Historical Martial Arts has picked up eleven five star reviews on Amazon.com in its first week in the wild. I couldn't be happier. The reviews come from beginners and highly experienced practitioners, which suggests that the book does what I designed it to do: to encapsulate my experience for the benefit of the entire community.

Here are some of the reviews:

Guy is one of the best authors writing about martial arts today. He offers a unique blend of knowledge and experience, always with an emphasis on safety. Guy really sets the standard for realizing historical training manuals, but in this book, he presents the reader with a broad based primer historical European martial arts. A great book and a good read.” — James Sanderson

“Though focused on historical European sword fighting this book is an excellent handbook on learning any martial art. As a four decade student of martial arts I especially appreciated his section on developing your own drills and his constant emphasis on safety. In short a guy who knows his stuff (Couldn’t resist.) I purchased a pre-release copy that’s how I can review a book that came out yesterday.”– “Rocky”

“This is a great introduction for anyone interested in getting into learning historical martial arts. Guy has many other excellent books covering various specific historical masters or weapon systems, but this book explains the thinking and process involved in recreating any historical martial art from historical sources. Guy covers topics such as how to read and interpret historical source material, how to construct a core drill, organize a practice group or teach a class as well as principles for monitoring your own skill level and determining what to focus on to improve.” — David Tehan

“Once again Guy has written an excellent book on Historical Martial Arts. This one distils his 20+ years in studying historical texts and applying them using today’s training methods, to provide beginners and more advanced students alike with the skills they need to take a manuscript, interpret it and develop and deliver a training course on it. I’ve been lucky enough to train with Guy at several workshops he’s run and this book feels like I am back in one of his classes, put now I’m getting the expanded and in-depth theory as well as the practice. Well worth the read for anyone into historical martial arts or those who want to improve their training in any discipline.”– “SLW”

“This is the book I wish I had when I started my journey into historical martial arts three decades ago. With the exploding popularity of the subject, we're seeing an abundance of translations and interpretations of the source material, but very few core sources on how to actually go about using them effectively. This book organizes these elements into a foundation for a personal practice, a study group, a school, or beyond. As an experienced practitioner, it's helped me reset my priorities and add depth to my practice. If you're new to the field, all I can say is start here.” — Eric Mauer

I could go on, but you can find them all here. I'd like to thank everyone who took the time to review the book; it's a major help, and it feels fantastic to know how much you liked it. Perhaps the most useful question is how did I do it? The answer is simple. When I had the first draft finished, I sent it out to a hundred beta readers, and asked for feedback. Most people have no experience in delivering useful feedback to a writer. “I liked it”, or “I didn't like it” are interesting, but not actionable. To help get the best, most detailed feedback, I created a form they could fill in to tell me what was good, what was bad, and what was missing. You can see the form here if you're interested in the specific questions I asked.

Then, when the feedback came in, I did what they asked me to do. The biggest single change was I greatly expanded the chapter on tournaments. So it's no wonder that these good people like the book: people just like them had a hand in creating it (and indeed some of the reviewers were also beta readers).

In other words, I asked the readers how to improve it, and then (and this is the difficult bit, and the most important by a million miles): I paid attention to their criticisms. Asking is easy, but actually listening when somebody tells you that something you've been slaving over for months or years actually needs quite a lot more work is hard. But the results speak for themselves.

 

 

My latest book encapsulates my entire approach to recreating historical martial arts; 25 years of experience in 350 pages!

With this book you can train your mind and body to become an expert in historical martial arts. It includes the seven principles of mastery, considers the ethics of martial arts, and goes into detail about the process of recreating historical martial arts from written sources.

On the practical side, I explain how to develop your skills, and lay out the path for students to become teachers, covering the basics of safe training, looking after your body, and even starting your own training group and teaching basic classes.

Please note, this is not a training manual for a specific style; it lays the groundwork for becoming expert in any style.

Roland Warzecha of DIMICATOR had this to say about it:

This is a comprehensive guide to the rewarding pursuit of historical martial arts, from choosing a source, study and research of historical manuals to developing and conducting a training program that serves your purpose best. Benefit from the experience of one of the most accomplished experts in the field. A must-read for beginners and advanced practitioners alike.

This book has read and edited by over a hundred test-readers, who have made suggestions and corrections, to make the book as useful as possible. So far, the reviews are good:

As a long time solo student of Historical Martial Arts, The Theory and Practice of Historical Martial Arts and Guy's other works have encouraged me to take my training to the next level. The advice in this book has helped me start a small club and provided well grounded advice for developing classes and instruction based on the author's experience. Guy's book also has plenty of advice which has helped me better plan out my personal training and to help me make better use of the original sources. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in HMA, particularly those in need of advice for getting started with planning a training program.
-Cameron Atkinson, Canberra.

It is now available on all platforms, in hardback and ebook formats. The paperback will follow later in the year.

Buy the book from any of these retailers, or you can order it from your local bookshop

 

 

 

 

Or you can get a free 70 page preview by signing up below:

There is a heady pleasure only authors know: the moment when the book you've been sweating blood over for the last many months or years, is finally done.

Here's the moment captured on video for you: transferring the folder from “Writing” to “PUBLISHED!” (this is probably the least exciting video you will ever see. Unless you're a writer. Then it might give you shivers):

https://youtu.be/xEoMdLcpbUU

This is not quite the most edited book I've ever written (that would be the forthcoming The Art of Swordfighting in Earnest, my re-working of Veni Vadi Vici), but it's been through a hundred beta readers in January last year, and another hundred or so since then. Is it perfect? No. Is it as good as I can make it without releasing it into the community to see what you make of it? Yes.

Here's what one reader had to say:

As a long time solo student of Historical Martial Arts, The Theory and Practice of Historical Martial Arts and Guy's other works have encouraged me to take my training to the next level. The advice in this book has helped me start a small club and provided well grounded advice for developing classes and instruction based on the author's experience. Guy's book also has plenty of advice which has helped me better plan out my personal training and to help me make better use of the original sources. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in HMA, particularly those in need of advice for getting started with planning a training program.
-Cameron Atkinson, Canberra.

It's available from Gumroad now! Click on the cover…

The hardback will be available from Amazon  (USA, UK, and everywhere else) and any other bookseller you care to name on April 6th. It will also be available from Kobo and iBooks then.

I plan to release the paperback later in the year…

Legendary sword and buckler instructor Roland Warzecha of DIMICATOR describes this book as:

 A comprehensive guide to the rewarding pursuit of historical martial arts, from choosing a source, study and research of historical manuals to developing and conducting a training program that serves your purpose best. Benefit from the experience of one of the most accomplished experts in the field. A must-read for beginners and advanced practitioners alike.

Want to try it? You can get a free 70 page sample by signing up to my mailing list below.

Forthcoming on Amazon, iBooks and Kobo APRIL 6 2018.

Available from Gumroad NOW!

I don’t usually read books with sword-fights in them. There is always something that annoys me. A clear case of an author using sport-fencing experience to write about longsword fights, for instance. Or making swords do things that they just don’t. It’s especially awful when it’s supposed to be set in a particular historical period. One minor error, and I want to throw the book through a window.

My friend Tracey lent me Traitor’s Blade by Sebastien de Castell, and out of respect for her, I risked it.

Oh my.

This is absolutely glorious escapist sword fantasy fiction, perhaps the best I’ve ever read. It’s not historical, so I don’t have to worry about some of the anachronisms (rapier-carrying magistrates fighting armoured knights, for instance), and the action is so perfectly pitched that not one of the dozens of fights over three books has triggered my “no! That wouldn’t work!” reflex. There is magic, but it doesn’t get in the way, and the books are written with a deft touch of humour that reads effortlessly, but is perhaps the most difficult skill for a writer to pull off.

And unlike most action-adventure books, though there are a lot of fights, the plot is entirely character-driven. The people are alive on the page, and the fights are there for good reason, driving the story along (I get so fed up with books that just lurch from battle to battle). Most of the characters you meet in these pages are folk you would want to have dinner with, or at least a pint (being very careful, with some of them, that they don’t slip anything into it first). Other characters? just run like hell if you see them coming.

The story centers around three men, Falcio, Kest, and Brasti, in a sort of three musketeers dynamic, but many of the most important and interesting characters are women; it would pass the Bechdel test, no problem. I won’t go into the story or world-building at all, because you should enjoy this cold. If I recall correctly it took about ten pages to hook me, and then it did what all good books should do: whisked me away into another world, to the abandonment of my work, family, and basic bodily functions.

The story continues across four books. I’ve read the first three. All four are out though, so you’re not going to get trapped in the ‘waiting for Martin’ Game of Thrones problem. Go, read number one. You can thank me later.

Dr. Ken Mondschein’s new book Game of Thrones and the Medieval Art of War is an unusual read. On the one hand, Ken is clearly a HUGE Game of Thrones fan, and has immersed himself in the books and TV show, and thought about them very deeply. On the other, he is a jouster, martial artist, fencer, and professional academic historian. As a result, he goes into depth and detail about things like the economic factors affecting armour development in Westeros, just as he might about how the same factors affected armour development in Italy.

The book has chapters on chivalry, armour, weaponry, swordplay, economics (actually my favourite chapter), women warriors, culture, and atrocities, and it also has a very useful bibliography that will expand my to-read pile to an unfortunate degree. The book is well written, though it could be better proof-read; there are quite a few niggling little typos. I’m extremely pedantic about such things, so they bothered me more than they might bother you.

I learned a great deal that I didn’t know about medieval warfare reading this, but I am not its target market; I read the first GoT book, and abandoned the series when almost everyone I liked spending time with died at the end of it. I loved the TV series (I’ve watched every episode), but I’m not a fan in the proper sense; it’s light entertainment for me, I don’t care about it the way I do about, for instance, Star Wars.

My conclusion is that if you are not a GoT fan, then the continual intrusion of a fictional world into what would otherwise be a brilliant primer on medieval warfare would be annoying. If you are a GoT fan, then this book will get you to look at the world that George R. R. Martin has created with new appreciation for the depth of thought that Martin put into it. You will also learn a lot about how similar forces played out for real on the battlefields of the middle ages. This might also be an excellent gift for a GoT fan in your life who you’d like to wean onto historical research. If was to give it a star rating, it would be 5 out of 5 for GoT fans, and 3 out of 5 for those who aren't so bothered about the goings on in Westeros.

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