123. SEBASTIEN DE CASTELL: Swashbuckling fantasy, writing fight scenes, and dealing with ADHD

This week on LiteraryHype Podcast, author Sebastien De Castell joins me to talk about his latest swashbuckling fantasy novel, Our Lady of Blades. It's about a mysterious swordswoman who appears  just in time to fight for someone in a duel. Sebastien calls this his most complicated work yet, so hear him talk about why this book took 28 drafts over seven years. Plus, we're talking about how life experiences shape authors and how he deals with his recent ADHD diagnosis.

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00;00;02;29 - 00;00;09;06
Unknown
Hi and welcome to Literary Hype. I am Stephanie, your literary hype woman back with another author conversation for Literary Hype podcast.

00;00;09;10 - 00;00;13;10
Unknown
Today's author is one who brings us the swashbuckling humor,

00;00;13;12 - 00;00;17;00
Unknown
which I did not know was a genre until his publicist emailed me,

00;00;17;06 - 00;00;18;12
Unknown
but apparently it is.

00;00;18;16 - 00;00;27;07
Unknown
So I'm talking to Sebastian de Costa about his new book, Our Lady of Blades.

00;00;27;10 - 00;00;31;10
Unknown
Welcome to literary hype. So excited to get to talk to you from Emerald City Comic-Con about

00;00;31;10 - 00;00;33;14
Unknown
book, Our Lady of Blades. Thanks so much, Stephanie.

00;00;33;16 - 00;00;42;10
Unknown
So before we get into the book, yes, I did some, like, internet sleuthing on you because, your publicist reached out and was like, it's a swashbuckling, dark humor.

00;00;42;10 - 00;00;54;00
Unknown
And I was like, I have never heard a book described like this. So I'm very interested in you as a person in this, in this genre. So for someone who hasn't heard of swashbuckling, dark humor, what kind of vibe can they expect?

00;00;54;03 - 00;00;56;19
Unknown
what I write mostly is, you know, swashbuckling fantasy.

00;00;56;19 - 00;01;15;00
Unknown
So, so, so it kind of comes both from the fantasy tradition where where we might have magic and swords and all that kind of stuff. But also from the swashbuckling tradition, which is sort of comes more out of writers like, you know, everyone knows, Dumas and less people know Rafael Sabatini, but people like that.

00;01;15;00 - 00;01;42;03
Unknown
And then more modern, kind of swashbuckling authors like Arturo Perez for verité, where there's a lot of that kind of strange, idealistic tradition. That's part of it. That's a kind of a different idealism and from, from, let's say, most fantasy. So that's usually kind of what I think of. And then and so Our Lady Blades is very much coming out of a mix of those two traditions, like the first, the inspiration for me in part was a really terrible idea, which was for anyone who's read Count of Monte Cristo.

00;01;42;10 - 00;02;01;15
Unknown
You know that it's a massive, long book, and the first half is all about Edmond Dantes is promising young guy in love who's everything's looking up, and then he gets betrayed and goes to prison. And then it's this horrible prison, and then he learns how to be this brilliant fighter and conspirator from this guy at bay forever. And then he goes and he finds this treasure.

00;02;01;15 - 00;02;19;15
Unknown
And then halfway through, he appears in Marseilles as this, mysterious figure. But the reader knows all about it. And I always went, you know what? If I did something like that, I would start where the character just appears on the screen and no one knows who they are, including the reader. So I spent seven years figuring out why Dumas was right.

00;02;19;17 - 00;02;35;02
Unknown
But you came to this in an interesting way, like to your your swashbuckling writing. The internet tells me you wanted to be a bard when you grew up. I absolutely did, when I was 16 years old. I went camping on an island off the coast of British Columbia by myself. And I am, like, the world's worst camper.

00;02;35;02 - 00;03;07;08
Unknown
Like, I, I went wearing like a leather jacket. I had a tent that didn't have pegs, and had holes in it. And I would set up on like the side of slopes and things like just I was just absolutely horrible at it. And I ended up at a ferry terminal ready to go to the next island. And I was, but I missed it to sort of four hours before the next one, I found a book called Bard by Keith Taylor, and it's this wonderful sort of sixth century sort of fantasy historical novel about this, this, this bard who swings a sword and sing songs and goes on adventures all over the world and tells

00;03;07;08 - 00;03;28;04
Unknown
stories. And I thought like, that's the career for me. Like, that's what I want. Unfortunately, like, Monster.com doesn't have any jobs for, you know, bards. But I sort of over the, over the decades kind of got to do that in aggregate. So, you know, I did fight choreography for the theater for a while. I was a full time touring musician for a long time.

00;03;28;07 - 00;03;33;18
Unknown
I did all these sort of different careers, and then they all culminated in becoming a novelist. So I kind of got to be a bard. Eventually

00;03;33;22 - 00;03;37;28
Unknown
how did that initial dream like influence your writing style?

00;03;38;04 - 00;03;54;14
Unknown
the thing about writing and, you know, you and I were talking about this very briefly before is that it's so much a product of all the experiences of your life, which is what kind of makes it such an amazing vocation, because, you know, in some ways, you know, we think of like, how do I become a better writer, more successful writer?

00;03;54;14 - 00;04;22;25
Unknown
We think, well, you know, study more craft or study the market. But a big part of it is go out and have more and more experiences. And so all of those different experiences, informed my writing, for example, you know, Play of Shadows, which is another, swashbuckling fantasy in the In the Court of Shadows series, which is about this theater and this theater company full of these, like, absolutely bizarre actors who are constantly raging against each other until there's another acting company they're fighting against, at which point they're all very, very united.

00;04;22;28 - 00;04;40;24
Unknown
And this whole magic of the theater sort of notion, I came up with a, a magic system based on the theater for it. That was based on my experiences working on a production of Richard the Third in London years and years and years ago with this wonderful group of actors and crew and and just how kind of crazy that world was.

00;04;40;26 - 00;04;59;05
Unknown
And so all those experiences are what drive it, you know, Our Lady blades and part came out of, the fact that I and so I used to fence quite a bit. I'm picking up fencing again recently I actually, which I adore classical French fencing because it's, it's so formal. It's very much like ballet or dance. And my wife loves to ballroom dance.

00;04;59;05 - 00;05;19;15
Unknown
So, oddly, fencing and dancing fit together incredibly well. And so that will end up in ends up informing the writing of something like Our Lady of Blades, where it's not just scenes of dueling and sword fights that have to be there, but this undercurrent of not just the conflict and tension, but also the sort of the strange beauty of a sword fight.

00;05;19;18 - 00;05;33;17
Unknown
And I just want to talk about that, because with books like this, where you are doing a lot of fighting in action and in that sense, after so many books, how do you avoid it feeling repetitive and keeping it from going dry on the reader?

00;05;33;19 - 00;05;41;07
Unknown
Well, it's very much, always remembering that everything that's on the page is filtered through the character.

00;05;41;09 - 00;06;02;11
Unknown
So, you know, two people could have a sword fight and experience a completely differently in the same way that two witnesses to a car crash will give a completely different accounting, because everything that they're observing is, is filtered through their experiences and their own psyches. And so as long as you're really staying true to whatever character you're writing, then any type of scene will be different.

00;06;02;15 - 00;06;23;10
Unknown
Because part of what part of voice when we talk about, you know, character voice is actually what things people notice, like, you and I could, can, can look up at the stairs and one of us might notice, like the beautiful colors on the cushions, but another one might go, this is like a really awkward staircase. I remember the time I fell over something like this and you know what I mean.

00;06;23;10 - 00;06;42;19
Unknown
So. So it's just a different world that they perceive and that means that the story will always feel different. How'd you know I fell on these stairs last night? Because I would fall on these stairs. That would be a shared experience. We might write it the same way. Yeah. Trying to get off of the stairs, down to onto the seating part and just like, nope, that's deeper than I thought it would.

00;06;42;21 - 00;07;06;20
Unknown
But you talked about the experience side of things, and from the internet tells me that you love to travel. Yes. So what are some of your favorite places to go and places that you would never go back to? Oh, that's really interesting. There's almost nowhere that I wouldn't go back to, because one of the reasons why travel is, is such an enriching experience is because you find the beauty in every different place you go to.

00;07;06;22 - 00;07;28;18
Unknown
There's places I wouldn't go to right now because, you know, there might be conflict in the region. So I was just in Jordan a couple of years ago, which is just an absolutely amazing country. And the people are absolutely wonderful and completely peaceful. You know, when you sort of meet them and there's they're incredibly welcoming, even if you are coming from a very different, you know, religious background or things like that.

00;07;28;18 - 00;07;51;24
Unknown
Most people you meet are very, very sort of open and welcoming. And if they don't like you for some reason, they will just sort of tend to leave you alone. But when I go back to Jordan right now, while there's sort of conflict in the Middle East, you know, probably not. And that's the thing that also changes is you start to fear for places that you've been in love because you know, that conflict can actually have very long term repercussions.

00;07;52;02 - 00;08;10;13
Unknown
So, a place my wife and I will often find ourselves back in Paris because she loves Paris so much. My publishers are based in London and I quite like London, and I have lots of writer friends in London, so I will often end up back in London. I think, you know, Egypt is very hard to beat as a as a place to visit.

00;08;10;13 - 00;08;38;00
Unknown
Like, I know I want to go back there at some point. Morocco is fantastic. I love I would, I would love to go back there third time. But as far as, like somewhere I would not want to go back to, I honestly like I'm not I'm not just saying this like I would. I don't think I could think of one like I was I started going, well, maybe I can make like a really typically Canadian sarcastic comment about an American city, but there's no American city I've ever visited where I where I don't go.

00;08;38;00 - 00;08;40;13
Unknown
You know, it'd be really fun to go back and see more of that.

00;08;40;16 - 00;08;51;20
Unknown
your least favorite question, according to the internet, is where do you get your ideas? And you respond with, my brain. So I don't like that question either. But so I wanted to flip that a little bit. Where do you get your sense of humor?

00;08;51;27 - 00;09;20;02
Unknown
you know, I come from a family where finding cutting things to say to each other at the dinner table is a sort of an integral family bonding ritual. And so the rhythms of that always really interest me. And so when I'm writing. So, for example, when I was writing The Great Coates books, you know, Trader's Blade and Onward, the banter between Falco cast and brass is very much driven by that sort of one upping each other and that sort of natural cadence that people fall into.

00;09;20;07 - 00;09;44;02
Unknown
So that was very much part of that. Whereas, for example, in Our Lady of Blades, Lady Consequence and the the woman who's only sort of known as the old woman for most of the book, the strange person who's always incredibly rude to her, that was really about writing the unsaid parts. And so one of the things that was tricky when I was writing that book, which, you know, had like 28 drafts like this is by far the most difficult book I've ever written.

00;09;44;07 - 00;10;04;00
Unknown
I was trying to make it so that the reader could perceive the unspoken things between them that were almost the opposite of whatever they would actually say aloud. So it's it comes from those things just from listening and observing and, and just kind of cherishing all those weird interactions that we have with family, with friends, sometimes with strangers.

00;10;04;03 - 00;10;08;02
Unknown
So what made Our Lady of Blades so complicated and difficult to write?

00;10;08;03 - 00;10;28;22
Unknown
I had this sort of vision of this puzzle that's unfolding as you're following all these sort of swashbuckling adventures and court duels and and so the entire judicial system is actually kind of complicated. So when we think of like, trial by combat, it's always this fairly basic thing. Okay. Two people are going to fight and whoever wins, you know, the gods say was correct.

00;10;28;24 - 00;10;54;00
Unknown
But interestingly, the setting for Our Lady Blades and the Great Coats books, trial by Combat is a very, very long, storied history and has developed into all of these intricate different forms of judicial dueling. You know, everything from, you know, a sentencing duel where, you know, you're sentenced to ten years in prison and you appeal it, and your champion is fighting a a prosecuting duelist.

00;10;54;02 - 00;11;17;14
Unknown
And every cut they score on them is a year off year sentence. But every cut that the prosecutor scores on your champion is a year added to your sentence. Even to things like reconstruction duels where the whole courtroom is set up to be like the place where disputed testimony was originally set. And, and they try to play out the events and sort of who wins shows what was possible at the time.

00;11;17;17 - 00;11;36;15
Unknown
So part of it was just that sort of complexity of the culture and then not, you know, exposing the complexity of the culture all the time. Part of it is that there's a lot of hidden identities in this story. There's a lot of a lot of different relationships that you only come to learn as it sort of progresses.

00;11;36;18 - 00;11;55;29
Unknown
So it was just a very, very tricky to to get it right. The, the weird thing about novels and the fabulous thing about being a novelist is that you really don't know what to expect when you go in. So, for example, Malevolent Seven, which was one of the sort of bigger hits for me in the last few years, was a novel I wrote in a month, like the first draft was.

00;11;55;29 - 00;12;08;24
Unknown
It was February of 2020. I was in really bad mood. Lockdowns were just starting. Covid had hit. I was like, I'm going to write something for myself. I don't care if nobody else needs to read it. And then I wrote this novel in a month, and then all of a sudden my agent was like, oh, I love this.

00;12;08;24 - 00;12;23;26
Unknown
And then the publishers loved it. And then all of a sudden, you know, it had all this success. Whereas Our Lady Blades literally took me seven years. It went through 28 drafts because you have to you have to get it right. It has to feel true to you as an author. If you're expecting readers to devote their time to it,

00;12;24;00 - 00;12;28;21
Unknown
did you look up how many words it took over those 28 drafts to get to the final copy?

00;12;28;23 - 00;12;48;10
Unknown
Stephanie. If I did that, I would just be huddled in a corner crying right now. I would literally be going because I had I wrote and had published eight books while writing Our Lady of Blades and and if I look back and went all the different acts I cut and things like that, like that would have been a lot of books I could have sold,

00;12;48;13 - 00;12;50;13
Unknown
Veronica Roth, her upcoming book.

00;12;50;13 - 00;12;59;17
Unknown
Yeah. Seek, seek the traitor son. She totaled up her words, and it was over a million to get to the final copy. Oh, my goodness,

00;12;59;17 - 00;13;05;17
Unknown
I would have to really just work on myself to be able to leave that behind and go. It's going to be okay.

00;13;05;24 - 00;13;11;02
Unknown
Don't worry about it. So for anybody who hasn't seen this book, what is the, general plot of Our Lady of.

00;13;11;02 - 00;13;33;03
Unknown
Sure. So, Our Lady Blades, is this, is a swashbuckling fantasy set in this city where a lot of trials are almost there, almost entertainment. A lot of them are decided through these intricate judicial duels and into this world where duelists have these titles, so they're never allowed to be a noble person. You can't be a viscount and be a duelist.

00;13;33;05 - 00;14;01;07
Unknown
And so instead, duelists get these titles like our Lord of corpses or our Chevalier most chivalrous, and the sort of the most valued title of all is Our Lady of Blades, which is the title that usually goes to the Duke Champion. And so into this world of courtroom intrigue where everyone knows who the great fencers are, appears this woman who doesn't give her name, no one knows who she is, and she bests our Lord of corpses, who's supposed to be the best, duelist, and also the most corrupt.

00;14;01;10 - 00;14;19;29
Unknown
And the judge, you know, she when the judge forces her to, you know, give a name, she she just says no one of consequence because. Which is my homage to the Princess Bride. Because I was about to say a lot of my books have a very tiny homage there. And so he dubs her Lady Consequence. And so we soon start to see that she is not there randomly.

00;14;19;29 - 00;14;33;25
Unknown
She's not just a stranger. She has her own agenda. And, and that all of these families might be working against her. And if and despite how good she is as a duelist, if anyone finds out who she really is, she'll basically be dead by sunrise.

00;14;33;28 - 00;14;53;04
Unknown
Before the book even gets started, you mention a real life woman who disappeared for a while and came back as a swords woman. So talk a little bit about the inspiration you pulled from history. Yeah. Ella Hatton was an actress in the 19th century from Zanesville, Ohio, and she was a stage actress, and she sort of disappeared from the stage.

00;14;53;06 - 00;15;13;29
Unknown
And it wasn't as if it was intended to be a giant secret, but she sort of reappeared, after having trained with this very famous soldier of, fortune named Colonel Monster. And she became this, basically exhibition duelist. And she would fight with rapier with dagger, with long sword or saber, she would fight on horseback.

00;15;14;01 - 00;15;36;00
Unknown
And she was so good that she was would eventually have to, like, take out ads in the newspaper offering these huge prizes for anyone who would, who would, take her on in an exhibition duel. And, the papers dubbed her Lady Gaga Arena, the Jaguar Arena. I my apologies for anyone who's Spanish for my horrible pronunciation.

00;15;36;02 - 00;16;01;11
Unknown
there there were these sort of famous duelist like sword fighters who would all claim that they could beat her, and then she'd go to the town where they were, and they were just hot, hot footed out of town. And so I just always love the fact that someone went and reinvented themselves that way, you know, in an environment where basically she, she wasn't sort of succeeding that well as a stage actress reinvents her as this champion, you know, sword fighter.

00;16;01;14 - 00;16;14;12
Unknown
She was five foot four. She was 150 pounds, but she was just incredibly good at what she did. And, and so I always loved that story. And then she kind of disappeared again after that. So I just I like those sort of people of mystery.

00;16;14;14 - 00;16;20;23
Unknown
If we were to have trial by combat in our modern society, how do you think things would be different?

00;16;20;26 - 00;16;41;03
Unknown
Oh, goodness. I think there would be a lot more steroid use, a lot more cheating of the weapons. But of course, there always was cheating of the weapon. So often in some of the sort of 17th, 18th century duels which were mostly illegal by then, we often forget that dueling has mostly been illegal everywhere for most of time.

00;16;41;03 - 00;17;06;02
Unknown
There's very few periods where you actually could justifiably have a legal duel. But they would do horrible things like dip their swords in dog shit and things so that any wound would be more likely to become septic. And so there was a lot of that. I think that, dueling sits very nicely in fantasy novels, and very poorly in practical reality.

00;17;06;04 - 00;17;31;28
Unknown
So we should probably, not bring it back, I guess would be my, my thought on that. Like, would we act differently as a society if you could end up having to fight that? So that is a very good point. In the sense that we have reached this strange place where online people will say things that they would never say to another person, to their face.

00;17;31;28 - 00;17;58;12
Unknown
Now, I like to think that a lot of the reason they wouldn't say to their face is that when we face each other, we we can't avoid the compassion of being fellow humans. And so we're aware that what we're saying is, is hurtful and painful, whereas online it feels like it's all distant. It doesn't really count. But I think you're absolutely right that if we, if we said those the things people say to each other online in person, there'd be a lot more actual duels, regardless of the law.

00;17;58;14 - 00;18;23;06
Unknown
And so, yeah, probably best that we just stop saying those things probably, you know, think about what you say on the internet before you say it. It's just generally be a good idea. Yeah. Well, you know, I'm so blessed because, you know, being sort of older, you know, part of Gen X, I have the virtue or the or the good fortune that all the stupid things I ever did when I was younger were pre-internet, so they're not on there.

00;18;23;09 - 00;18;45;22
Unknown
And so now and I and and I don't feel the same pressure that a lot of people, especially sort of Gen Z and stuff. They feel like there's a pressure to be there, right? And to be part of that conversation. So I understand that completely, but yeah, hopefully we'll get away from that. I but despite your repeated efforts in this direction, I don't think dueling is going to be the solution to social media.

00;18;45;24 - 00;19;10;24
Unknown
Darn it. I just really wanted to just be like, okay, let's all get some words and have some fun. No, I'm just kidding. I would do a Ryan Cahill, though. That would be entertaining. And he's much taller than me, so he has the advantage of reach. But you know, I have old age and treachery on my side. That would be a really entertaining way to do your panel is to be like answering questions while I'm not at all convinced that's not how it's going to end up, so love it.

00;19;10;27 - 00;19;23;01
Unknown
But we were talking before this about with the Gen Z, the older generations, and like the research that's happening now into ADHD and you just got recently diagnosed, how is that shaped you as a writer?

00;19;23;03 - 00;19;39;19
Unknown
it's really difficult to say because the one of the reasons why adults, often don't get diagnosed is because if you've kind of made it into adulthood, you probably found systems to to help yourself deal with it, which I think is true of all of us in different ways.

00;19;39;19 - 00;20;00;26
Unknown
We find systems to make the things that are challenges for us individually, possible to, to sort of manage. And so it does have certainly one of the effects, which I think is sort of helpful as a writer, is that you are constantly pulled in different directions. You see something, you know, that's really interesting. I wonder what that means.

00;20;00;26 - 00;20;18;06
Unknown
And then you're like, I wonder if I could fit that into a story. You know, you watch it, you know, you I for me, I often do what I like to call the Homer Simpson, which is there's a there's an episode of The Simpsons from a million years ago where Homer is basically being drawn into a cult and they, you know, show them the movie, the cult movie of the leader being wonderful.

00;20;18;06 - 00;20;34;03
Unknown
And at the end, everyone's, like, glassy eyed and he's cheering completely. And they're like, you know, Brother Homer, why did you know? Tell us why. You know, you love what the master had to say. And he's like, oh, it was when it was when the Batmobile, like, went over the cliff. And then that other car exploded and they're like, but that wasn't in the movie.

00;20;34;05 - 00;20;40;08
Unknown
He's like, no, no, the movie was really boring. So I was just making another one up in my head and I thought, that's how I do it.

00;20;40;11 - 00;20;53;10
Unknown
That's amazing because that is so, so accurate. Yeah, yeah, I just. It's like, oh, what did you think of this? Oh, I was thinking about all the other things I need to do.

00;20;53;12 - 00;21;03;00
Unknown
Yeah. And like developing those systems is really important for ADHD. Neurotypical or neurodiversity. What is the most unique system that you've developed for yourself

00;21;03;00 - 00;21;12;08
Unknown
you know, there are so many different systems that that, that people use and what kind of drives the system is what motivates you as a at your brain.

00;21;12;15 - 00;21;36;00
Unknown
And that's kind of true of all of us in a way with ADHD. For me personally, the difference is that most people are motivated by whether something is important, what the reward is for doing it, what the consequences for not doing it. And that never seems to allow my brain to engage. So for me, it's more things like novelty or, or completing something or, or sense of competition, like self challenge.

00;21;36;07 - 00;21;56;14
Unknown
So my debut novel, Traitor's Blade, literally would not exist if I hadn't have heard about something called the three day Novel Writing Contest. And I literally, this thing's been around for more than 40 years, and I heard about it on the last day that you could possibly even sign up for it. And I and I thought, you know, can I write a novel in three days?

00;21;56;14 - 00;22;13;05
Unknown
Like that would be almost impossible. I have to find out. And I didn't realize at the time that most people try to write, like, 10 or 15,000 words, and they start with a detailed outline and notes, and they start at midnight on the dot. Like I went to bed. I got up at seven the next morning and went, I wonder what I should write?

00;22;13;05 - 00;22;26;10
Unknown
And I had this story of these swashbuckling magistrates kind of tinkering around in my head, and even though I had all these other things to do, I had a I had a gig as a musician. I had to play a wedding. I had to sing The Lady in Red, which is like the worst song to have to sing.

00;22;26;13 - 00;22;43;04
Unknown
And, but I wrote 44,000 words, and that weekend, an entire draft of a of my first fantasy novel, which then, you know, years later, I revised and it sort of more than doubled in length. And that got me my first book deal, before Book deal, which then got me an eight book deal, which got me another four book deal.

00;22;43;04 - 00;23;02;13
Unknown
And, you know, even now I've had 18 novels published, and I have seven more under contract right now that I have to do. And it's and so for me, the system is find the challenge that feels like it kind of awakens your brain. And even with Our Lady Blades, which, as I mentioned, is a novel that for me is the hardest thing I've ever written.

00;23;02;13 - 00;23;23;21
Unknown
It's taken 28 drafts in seven years, and the thing that allowed me to to kind of finish it, to really go, okay, no, no, now I'm going to really get it done. Was realizing this is the hardest thing I'm going to do. Can I do it? And so for me, often it's the system comes out of finding a specific challenge that for some reason awakens something inside of me.

00;23;23;27 - 00;23;31;24
Unknown
And you've got 18 novels. So let's say that someone has not heard of you before. This is their first time hearing about you in your books, and they want to get started. What's the best place to start?

00;23;31;27 - 00;23;41;03
Unknown
So there's a few different starting points people can take. So if you like swashbuckling fantasy, sort of Three Musketeers meets Game of Thrones, then Traitor's Blade is a is a good place to start.

00;23;41;05 - 00;24;07;21
Unknown
I have a Ya fantasy series called Spell Slinger. That's been translated into more than a dozen languages around the world, and it was option for film and television and things like that. And it's quite a lot. It's a lot of fun, and it's an easy entry point. If what you really want in the world is something like The Magnificent Seven, but with wizards blowing things up and swearing constantly, then I have you covered with Malevolent seven.

00;24;07;23 - 00;24;25;25
Unknown
And so and if you want something that's, you know, fantasy, but but a little more intricate than some of the, some of the things you might have read. I mean, there's lots of very intricate fantasy out there. Like anyone is. Right. Guy Gavriel Kay knows you can have really, really rich and deep fantasy. But something like Our Lady of Blades is a fine starting point.

00;24;26;02 - 00;24;42;14
Unknown
All the books in the Quarter Shadows series, which which include Crucible of Chaos and Play of Shadows and Our Lady of Blades, are all meant that you can read them in any order. And because they're all standalones that are connected, but there's no requirement to follow a particular order. And so any of those are a good starting point.

00;24;42;17 - 00;24;53;00
Unknown
And you mentioned your music career. Which I saw. It was a tribute band for the Beatles and some, crazy 80s stuff. How has being a musician helped you as a writer?

00;24;53;05 - 00;25;11;26
Unknown
you know, music gives you a few different perspectives. One of which is there's this immediacy that you don't get as a novelist of what you are playing, what you were doing, what kind of place you're putting yourself into is reflected in the crowd.

00;25;11;29 - 00;25;28;18
Unknown
And so you have this sort of immediate sense of what works and what's not working and how people are responding. Whereas when you write a novel, you know, you write 150,000 words, it goes through a million drafts, it goes through editors and there's, you know, cover design and everything else. And you still don't know how people are going to ultimately respond to it.

00;25;28;21 - 00;25;59;06
Unknown
And so that immediacy is, is in part what helps inform what I think when I'm writing, I would react to as a reader and therefore maybe other people will as well. So it's really, really nice for that in the same way that, you know, when East choreographs sword fights for theater plays, that sort of teaches you a lot about rhythm and about storytelling without words, because, you know, most Shakespeare plays, if you if you look at it when there's about to be a sword fight, it literally just says they fight like the stage directions.

00;25;59;06 - 00;26;21;00
Unknown
They fight. And then it's like someone's dead and there's nothing in between. And so you have to tell that story using nothing but the actions. Because and I've tested this, theater directors will not let you add words that Shakespeare didn't write. Makes sense. You know, you ask one of the actors to grunt too much and they'll be like, Shakespeare did not write that.

00;26;21;02 - 00;26;50;17
Unknown
And so you kind of learn those different techniques. But again, you know, if I'd been a plumber, you know, plumbing would inform. There's things about that that would help you be a better writer. That's what's so wonderful about this field, is that every different thing you do can help inform it. I just happened to have done, you know, because of having desperately wanted to be a bard, you know, things like travel and sword fighting and music, but all of our different sort of endeavors, inform, inform our writing.

00;26;50;17 - 00;26;57;18
Unknown
Because even if you're writing science fiction or fantasy, you're always sort of writing about the human condition, and the human condition is found in all the different things that we do.

00;26;57;24 - 00;27;29;24
Unknown
Well, great. The last question we always ask, because this is literary hype. What books are you hyped about right now? Oh, goodness. I just finished reading all the Tom Swann books by Christian Cameron, who admittedly is a good friend of mine, but I absolutely love them. It's so hard for me to find a series where I'll just keep reading more and more books in the series, and this one is a sort of 15th century or like early Renaissance, sort of European historical adventure about a young knight who's also a bit of a, an art thief, for a cardinal.

00;27;29;24 - 00;27;53;19
Unknown
And so there's a little bit of Indiana Jones in it. And I just absolutely adored, every part of that. It's one of those series where you can just, you know, as you're going to bed, pick up the book again and keep going and just follow along with the adventure. So I really, really love that. I'm looking forward to the astral Library by Kate Quinn, because, the Alice Network was one of my favorite books of the last, ten, 15 years.

00;27;53;24 - 00;28;16;11
Unknown
Have you read The Diamond? I, I did also fabulous. Yeah. And the rose code. So good. World War two books are fantastic. I know, and it's so strange because she started out writing sort of stuff that would more be in my zone of of books, sort of set in either the Renaissance or ancient Rome. They were much more sort of, I think, romantic or romance focused, but still just brilliant stuff.

00;28;16;11 - 00;28;32;19
Unknown
But and I'm not a World War Two sort of personal World War One sort of person. But I first picked up the Alice network, and I think, like the first line of it, was what hooked me. So I'm looking forward to the astral library, which looks like a departure from her other stuff, so I'd love that.

00;28;32;19 - 00;28;55;04
Unknown
But yeah. And then, I'm actually reading Ryan Cahill's, of Blood and Fire. Right now. And it's lovely. Is it's just got all that wonderful classic, epic fantasy. And even though I get lumped in with epic fantasy people, but I'm always very careful to say, well, I'm really swashbuckling fantasy because it's, it's a little it tends to be a little bit, sort of not faster paced necessarily, but they tend to be somewhat shorter books.

00;28;55;04 - 00;29;15;21
Unknown
So not these 480,000 word books, but, you know, even Our Lady Blades, which is probably my longest book, is 186,000 words. So about 550 or 600 pages. But it's I don't write the 1000 page down. So it's nice when I get when I have a friend and I can read theirs and sort of in a way, kind of get to know them better by reading their, you know, thousand page tome.

00;29;15;23 - 00;29;22;04
Unknown
Yeah. Well, thank you so much for hanging out with literary hype from Emerald City Comic-Con. Thanks so much, Stephanie.

00;29;22;07 - 00;29;33;03
Unknown
Thanks again to Sebastian for hanging out with me at Emerald City Comic-Con to talk all about his book, Our Lady of Blades. If you'd like to check this out for yourself, the links to do so are down in the show notes, as well as where to find Sebastian on social media.

00;29;33;08 - 00;29;40;13
Unknown
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00;29;40;15 - 00;29;43;06
Unknown
Thanks so much for listening to the Literary Hype podcast.