Guest Post By: Jay Requard for Thunder on the Battlefield: Sword & Sorcery Anthologies Editor James R Tuck

I so glad to have Jay Requard on the blog today. He is here for the Thunder on the Battlefield Anthologies blog tour. He is an author and can be found in Volume one: Sword. Thunder on the battlefield is made up of two volumes: Vol. 1 is Sword and Vol. 2 Sorcery.

Guest Post by Jay Requard:

Black Companies and Bloody Elephants

When I first sat down to create Jishnu the Srijati, the hero who appears in my Thunder on the Battlefield short, “Paper Demons”, I had come a long way in becoming a Sword & Sorcery/Heroic Fantasy author. Growing up I had devoured the luminaries of the genre both old and new, be it climbing the heights of gloomy towers with Robert E. Howard, fighting off hordes of devilish enemies with Karl Edward Wagner, or standing at the edge of the battlefield with Glen Cook. I had marveled in the complex yet playful style of Fritz Leiber and marveled at the storytelling prowess of James Enge and John Marco. In creating my own character, my own world, and my own voice, I felt like it was time for me to step up and try my best.

Jishnu is a great nod to my favorite genre, yet at the same time, he is also an indictment at what I see in fantasy today. In this age of “grimdark” and “realistic grittiness,” I see many of the great tropes which were once used by the masters being turned into clichés: trouble protagonists, seductively-evil villains who make a little-too-much sense, twisted but meaningless violence and sex, and very little light at the end of the tunnel. These matters are made worse by the fact that much of epic, heroic, and high fantasy are still grounded within western European settings, with western European heroes, all gallivanting around in a world that often strains the line between Dungeons & Dragons and the Middle Ages. Now, there’s nothing wrong with these old tropes, and there are many writers in the genre who are still doing great work.

I simply wanted something different.

I wanted to speak for a time period I have loved since my childhood, to an era more vibrant and lush with creative soil yet to be fully tilled: The Iron Age. Specifically, I wanted to write a great Vedic hero, someone who was both a conglomeration of my love for India and its culture, but also a bridge between my favorite literary heroes and their stories. Jishnu is a combination of Howard’s Conan and Salvatore’s Drizzt Do’Urdon, a warrior of steely resolve and holding a loyalty to his friends that is indomitable, but he is also something I hope the readers find new and refreshing with his outlooks—he is a man walking into places that aren’t the misty mountains of the north or the green jungles of some “dark continent”. I set my story in what is akin to ancient China and let the sparks fly with ephemeral demons, talismans, and a villain I have to say I am very proud of.

Writing “Paper Demons” was a real way to explore Jishnu more than I already had, as there is a novel in the works right now with him as the main protagonist. While that manuscript is set far into the future, near the days when he has put down his sword and is trying to find a life of peace, this story is one of his younger years when he was a mercenary for The Grinders, a sellsword company that would have fit right into the armies of the 3^rd and 4^th century BCE. I wanted to show camaraderie, hardship, and the weight of being a leader on a young man’s shoulders as he tries to make his way in the world.

More importantly, I wanted to write a story where the heroes make it to the end of the tunnel, and while they might be bruised and bloody, they stand tall because they were brave against their enemies, loyal to the man next to them in the shield-wall, and dogged in their need to do more than just survive and conquer.

That grit and that darkness of today are there, but there is light in the end as well, a yearning for something more. I hope you find it just like I did.

Jay Requard is a sword & sorcery warlord from Apex, North Carolina. When he is not writing he enjoys fencing, brewing mead, and lifting heavy objects for his own amusement. He has a fluffy cat named Mona.

His blog can be found at http://sitwritebleed.blogspot.com/, a blog dedicated not only to my own writing but Sword & Sorcery as well.

His Twitter can be found @JayRequard

More about Thunder on the Battlefield.

Thunder on the Battlefield: Sword Book Synopsis: HARK! to the sounds of battle. Mighty men and women who take their destinies with the strength of their arm and the sharpness of their blades. These are tales of warriors, reavers, barbarians, and kings. Lands of wonder populated with monsters, black-hearted sorcerors of Stygian power, and heroes who have blood on their hands and on their steel.

This is SWORD AND SORCERY.

Edited by James R. Tuck, acclaimed author of the Deacon Chalk Novels, the Sword volume features tales from the following authors:

G. Gerome Henson

Jay Requard

D.T. Neal

John F. Allen

Marcella Burnard

David J. West

Alexis A. Hunter

James R. Tuck

Loriane Parker

W.E. Wertenberger

Stephen Zimmer

J.S. Veter

Thunder on the Battlefield: Sorcery Book Synopsis: BEHOLD! the clash of war. Steel upon steel and heroes fighting shield to shield. The only true victory is a brave death and the destruction of your enemies. These stories harken back to a barbaric past that never was. A time when heroic men and women cut glory from the cloth of a sorcery-filled world and stole gold from the hands of the gods themselves. This is fiction that takes no prisoners. No quarter asked. No quarter given.

This is SWORD AND SORCERY.

Edited by James R. Tuck, acclaimed author of the Deacon Chalk Novels, the Sword volume features tales from the following authors:

Jeffe Kennedy

Alex Hughes

Selah Janel

Steven Grassie

James R. Tuck

M. B. Weston

Brady Allen

S. H. Roddey

Steven S. Long

D. A. Adams

Mark Taverna

Steven L. Shrewsbury

About James R. Tuck: James R. Tuck lives outside Atlanta with his lovely wife and awesome kids. He has been a professional tattoo artist for 18 years and is a talented photographer. He is the author of the DEACON CHALK series (Kensington Books), the author of the CHAMPIONS OF HOLLOW EARTH series (Pro Se Press forthcoming 2014), the editor of the double anthology THUNDER ON THE BATTLEFIELD Volumes 1 and 2 (Seventh Star Press), and his short fiction has appeared and will appear in several anthologies such as: ONE BUCK ZOMBIES (One Buck Horror), THE BIG BAD (Dark Oak Press), HOOKERPUNK (Dark Oak Press forthcoming), ROBOTS UNLEASHED! (Mechanoid Press forthcoming), KAIJU RISING 2 (Ragnarok Press forthcoming), MONSTER EARTH 2 (Mechanoid Press forthcoming), and BADLANDS:TROUBLE IN THE HEARTLAND (Zelmer Pulp forthcoming).

Editor James R. Tuck’s Links:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jamesrtuckwriter

Twitter: https://twitter.com/JamesTuckwriter

Website: http://www.jamesrtuck.com

Blog: http://jamesrtuck.wordpress.com/

Amazon Links for Thunder on the Battle Field: Sword and Thunder on the Battlefield: Sorcery

Print Version

Sword:

http://www.amazon.com/Thunder-Battlefield-James-R-Tuck/dp/1937929248

Sorcery:

http://www.amazon.com/Thunder-Battlefield-James-R-Tuck/dp/1937929264

Kindle Version