Rock, Paper, Swords! - the Historical Action and Adventure Podcast

What happens when a medieval manuscripts scholar teams up with a bestselling thriller writer? You get The Tales of the Lawless Land — a gripping historical adventure series set in the chaos of the 14th century.In this episode of Rock, Paper, Swords!, hosts Matthew Harffy and Justin Hill sit down with Beth and Boyd Morrison, the brother–sister duo behind the swashbuckling adventures of Gerard Fox and Willa.We talk about:⚔️ Writing medieval action with thriller pacing📜 The impact of the Black Death & the Hundred Years’ War⛪ Excommunication, faith, and survival in the Middle Ages🔎 Researching manuscripts, relics, and real historical locations🗡️ Why Gerard Fox is like a “medieval Jack Reacher”If you love historical adventure, medieval history, or the thrill of Templar secrets, this one’s for you.🎧 Listen & subscribe everywhere: Rock, Paper, Swords Podcast LinksSupport the podcast:https://ko-fi.com/rockpaperswordshttps://www.patreon.com/c/RockPaperSwordsPodcast

Link Tree: ⁠https://linktr.ee/RockPaperSwords⁠ Support us on Patreon: ⁠https://www.patreon.com/RockPaperSwordsPodcast⁠ Buy us a beer and get a shoutout by heading to ⁠buymeacoffee.com/rockpaperswords⁠ Our guest today is Jason Kingsley, an incredibly successful businessman and a technologist who is also obsessed with the past. He is CEO of Rebellion Developments, game developers responsible for such games as Alien Vs Predator and the hugely popular Sniper Elite. Rebellion Publishing purchased 2000AD in 2000, and publishes comics featuring some amazing characters such as Judge Dredd, Strontium Dog, Roy of the Rovers, and Slaine.In 2017 Jason started a medieval history YouTube channel called Modern History TV, along with his brother Chris Kingsley, and senior producer Brian Jenkins, under the banner of Rebellion Productions. The YouTube channel has over three quarters of a million subscribers and provides a wealth of information. He also hosts the podcast, Future Imperfect.In 2012, he was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for service to the economy. Jason published, Leading the Rebellion: Questing to Succeed in Work and LifeWelcome to Rock, Paper, Swords, Chief Judge Kingsley! ;-)

Please support us on Patreon from as little as £1 per month and get bonus episodes including exclusive updates on the creation of our 2025 Xmas novella: patreon.com/RockPaperSwordsPodcast We're republishing this classic episode as we'll be doing a panel with Giles and Patricia Bracewell on February 8th with the HISTORY QUILL CONVENTION. During the 90s Giles Kristian was lead singer of pop group Upside Down, achieving four top twenty hit records! As a singer-songwriter he lived and toured for two years in Europe and has made music videos all over the world. Giles is half-Norwegian and his family history inspired him to write his first historical novels: the acclaimed and bestselling RAVEN Viking trilogy. For his next series, he drew on a long-held fascination with the English Civil War to chart the fortunes of a family divided by this brutal conflict in The Bleeding Land and Brothers’ Fury. Giles also co-wrote Wilbur Smith’s No.1 bestseller, Golden Lion. In The Rise of Sigurd novels he returned to the world of the Vikings. His Sunday Times bestseller, Lancelot, is currently in development for TV. He followed Lancelot with Camelot, and now, Where Blood Runs Cold is his debut contemporary thriller. His latest book, ARTHUR, came out in June 2024. Welcome to Rock, Paper, Swords, Giles Kristian!

If you would like to help us with our running costs, and get exclusive bonus episodes every month, a free copy of our book, Tips on Writing, Publishing and Marketing your Book, and other cool perks, check out our Patreon page. patreon.com/RockPaperSwordsPodcast Matthew and Steven chat this week with a musician for a change! Dr Mark Deeks is a choirmaster, as well as the piano player for one of Steven's favourite black metal bands, Winterfylleth, and also has his own "monastic doom metal" project called Ard. Ard put out a concept album which is kind of a historical novel in musical form so we were really happy to get Mark on the podcast and discuss a broad range of topics.  Mark also gives piano lessons online HERE Ard Bandcamp page Winterfylleth Bandcamp page Ard Lindisfarne Mead bundles Youtube video of Winterfylleth performing "The Hallowing of Heirdom", one of their most beautiful songs.  Theme music by Steven and Matthew. The short piece of music at the outro is Steven's attempt at doom metal!

If you would like to help us with our running costs, and get exclusive bonus episodes every month, and other cool perks including a FREE copy of the book we wrote together, check out our patreon page: ⁠  / rockpaperswordspodcast   Another episode and another musician who truly puts the ROCK in Rock, Paper, Swords! Todd "Dammit" Kerns is a multi-instrumentalist, singer, songwriter, and producer. He is most noted for being the bass player and backup singer in “Slash featuring Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators”, and for being the front man of “The Age of Electric”. His latest album is with Heroes and Monsters and it ROCKS! Check this out - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-KGpbcH8qU&ab_channel=FrontiersMusicsrl While touring the world, playing to sold out audiences, he has had the opportunity to share the stage with some of rock's biggest names, including some of his own personal heroes including Slash, Lemmy, Alice Cooper, Duff McKagan, Fergie, Bill Murray, Sammy Hagar and many more. Having played with so much rock royalty, that must make Todd “Rock Nobility” at the very least! Welcome to Rock, Paper, Swords, Todd!

THE EMPEROR'S SWORD is out next week, 25th April 2024, so we thought we'd remind you of this chat we had with him... Another fantastic guest this week, as Christian (also known as Miles) Cameron joins Steven and Matthew to chat about his books, research, re-enactments, historical fiction, fantasy, sci-fi, being a member of US Intelligence, and loads more! Some great chat and brilliant anecdotes in this one, you must check it out, Christian was a superb guest! Christian's website - https://christiancameronauthor.com/

Artificial Intelligence, or AI for short, is a hot topic at the moment. Perhaps the HOTTEST topic. It is cropping up in the news every day and there are predictions that it will take our jobs away or even take over the world! It probably isn’t quite as dire as those predictions would have us believe, but there is no doubt that AI generated text and images are here to stay, not to mention many other uses that we haven’t even foreseen yet. There will be impacts on our daily lives and creatives are especially worried about their livelihoods as computers become more and more adept at doing what only humans could do till now. We’re not experts on the subject and it is a HUGE subject, but we thought we’d have a quick chat about what AI can do now, what it might be able to do in the future and some of the complex issues arising as a result of this new technology. Cover image was created by AI from directions Matthew gave it. It's supposed to be Beobrand from his Bernicia Chronicles lmao!

Peter Gibbons is an author based in Kildare, Ireland. He completed a Law Degree in Liverpool University before embarking on a career in the Insurance Industry. After many years working in the UK & Ireland he decided to follow his dreams and wrote his debut novel, Viking Blood and Blade. After smashing into the independently published historical fiction scene in 2021, he had his second series picked up by a publisher and went on to win the prestigious Kindle Storyteller Award in 2022. Welcome to Rock, Paper, Swords, Peter!

Please support us on Patreon!Incredibly, we managed to get an interview with the legendary Tull frontman (Steven's favourite band in case you didn't hear him mention it on every previous episode...)!Ian talked with us about the brand new, rocking Jethro Tull albumRökFlöte,Norse mythology,Vladimir Putin appearing at a Tull meet-and-greet, the time journalists demanded details ofhis upcoming gender reassignment surgery, Broadsword 40th Anniversary boxset details,Under Wraps getting REAL drums, how he's a"bit of a fan" of Motörhead despite the umlauts, bands likeMötley Crüe using backing tapes on stage instead of playing completely live, how performing helps his asthma (not COPD!),how work is going on the NEXT album and its planned release date, and how he's a cranky old guy like Morrissey these days!We were told we'd get, at most, 45 minutes with Ian but we ended up chatting for over 80 minutes and it was just brilliant. We think you'll enjoy this episode. Give it a listen and check out RökFlöte, it's superb!

On today’s episode we’re going to talk about the first thing that most readers see before they’ve read a single word of a book. The old adage goes that one should never judge a book by its cover, but we all know that the majority of people do just that. A great cover can get a prospective reader to take a chance on a new author, and a bad cover can put people off, even though the story might be amazing. We’ll take a look at some of the things that make covers work and also talk about our own journey with the covers to our books and the decisions we’ve taken. NOTES Steven’s cover designers, More Visual - https://bookartwork.com/historical/ The first cover for The Abbey of Death - https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1757691654257875&set=a.146569898703400 Blog post about creating the axe for Wolf of Wessex - https://bernicia-chronicles.blogspot.com/2019/06/art-imitating-art-birth-of-axe.html Original The Serpent Sword cover - https://bernicia-chronicles.blogspot.com/2015/02/potential-cover-reveal-serpent-sword.html Lots of great quotes/tips in this article: https://nybookeditors.com/2016/10/create-standout-book-cover-beginners/ Tools: https://www.canva.com/create/book-covers/ https://www.fotor.com/design/book-cover https://www.visme.co/book-cover-maker/ https://www.adobe.com/express/create/cover/book

David Gilman has worked as a firefighter, professional photographer, he was a soldier in the Parachute Regiment’s Reconnaissance Platoon and a Marketing Manager for an international publishing company in South Africa. From 2000 until 2009 he was principal writer on the TV series A Touch Of Frost.  His MASTER OF WAR series follows the fortunes of Thomas Blackstone, a village stonemason in England sent to fight with King Edward’s army as an archer against the French in the 14th century in the 100 years war. David is also the author of two standalone novels for adults, The Last Horseman, set during the Boer War and Night Flight to Paris, a WW2 novel that pits a reluctant hero against the Nazi forces in Paris in 1943. The Englishman is a new thriller series introducing Dan Raglan, a contemporary knight errant who served in the French Foreign Legion. The second book in the series, Betrayal, published in 2022, was followed by Resurrection, in 2023. His DANGER ZONE YA adventure series, featuring plucky hero Max Gordon. THE DEVIL’S BREATH won the prestigious French award, Le Prix Polar Jeunesse, was shortlisted for the Manchester Book Award and the Spellbinding Award, nominated for the Carnegie Medal, and picked for the UK government’s recommended reading list for boys. It was also shortlisted for the 2010-2011 Isinglass Teen Read Award in New Hampshire, USA. Welcome to Rock, Paper, Swords, David!

It's a first for us here at RPS - an album review! Well, ROCK, paper, swords, right? There's two very good reasons for us doing this review (even putting aside the fact Steven is Tull's biggest fan): 1 - We were sent advance copies of the album, so it's only fair we did our best to listen to it and get an honest review out before the album is released. So here it is! 2 - Ian Anderson is hopefully going to be a guest on this very podcast, to chat about his career and RökFlöte in particular. It's an album based on Norse/Viking mythology/religion so it is absolutely perfect for us to review and discuss, given both Matthew and Steven are writing/have written books about the Vikings. Truly a match made in Valhalla! We hope you enjoy this bonus episode and check out the album when it's released on the 21st of April. It's FANTASTIC as you'll hear in our review. You can pre-order it here: https://jethrotullband.lnk.to/RokFlote Huge thanks to Inside Out Records, Ian Anderson, and The Publicity Connection for the review copies of the album! Stay tuned for our regular episode this Friday, as historical novelist and screenwriter David Gilman is our guest. You don't want to miss it...

We've both just started work on our new books. Join us to hear about the process. Research, challenges, pressures, deadlines, and, of course, fun! You probably already know that Steven's writing about Alfred the Great and the Vikings, but listen to find out what new historical period Matthew is venturing into... The King Alfred coin - https://twitter.com/SA_McKay/status/1641745580954189827?s=20

We are delighted to have another musician on today’s episode. Gregory Spawton is the founder of progressive rock band, Big Big Train. Big Big Train have released 14 studio albums and several live performances too. Big Big Train have been named Prog magazine’s Band of the Year on numerous occasions as well as winning Prog’s Album Of The Year awards several times. Their most recent album, Welcome To The Planet, was released on 28 January 2022. Gregory is also now a publisher. Formed in 2019, Kingmaker is a book publisher dedicated to the rock music sector. It is run by Gregory and Prog magazine journalist/Big Big Train manager Nick Shilton. Welcome to Rock, Paper, Swords, Gregory! https://www.bigbigtrain.com/

IAN ROSS is the author of the “Twilight of Empire” series, six historical novels set in the early 4th century AD, the era of the Roman emperor Constantine. The first of the series, “War at the Edge of the World”, was published in the UK in 2015, and the sixth, “Triumph in Dust", in 2019. His books have subsequently been published in the USA, Australia, Spain and Italy. His forthcoming novel, “Battle Song”, the first of a trilogy set in medieval England, will be published by Hodder & Stoughton on March 30th 2023. Welcome to Rock, Paper, Swords, Ian Ross!

The second of our episodes where we answer questions sent in by listeners. Some great ones again here, really got us thinking and we both enjoyed it! If you have any more for us, please do send them via Facebook, Twitter or our websites.  Next week we'll have a longer episode with another AMAZING guest (the one and only IAN ROSS!), but we'll do more episodes answering your questions if we get enough of them. www.matthewharffy.com www.stevenamckay.com

We recently posted on Twitter and Facebook asking for listener questions. Today we're going to answer some of those questions and they really provoked some interesting responses from Matthew and Steven! We’ll be answering more in a future episode and it might well become a regular thing, so if you have any questions you’d like us to answer, post them in our social media. We checked after the recording, and the last Aurochs was killed in the 17th century! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurochs

Another bonus episode! We chat about the brand new FULL theme song and how it came about, and we also have a couple of pretty BIG announcements, so tune in, and don't drop out! https://www.canelo.co/news/2023-02-22-canelo-set-to-publish-a-great-series-by-steven-a-mckay/

Dan Jones is a bestselling historian, TV presenter and award-winning journalist. His books, which have sold more than a million copies worldwide, include THE PLANTAGENETS, THE TEMPLARS, THE HOLLOW CROWN. His book CRUSADERS was published in autumn 2019. He co-authored the Sunday Times bestseller THE COLOUR OF TIME and THE WORLD AFLAME, published in March 2020, with Marina Amaral. Dan has also written and presented numerous TV series including 'Secrets of Great British Castles' (Netflix, Channel 5), 'Britain’s Bloodiest Dynasty: The Plantagenets' and 'London: 2000 Years of History'. Most recently Dan's historical fiction debut, ESSEX DOGS, the first installment in a trilogy set during the Hundred Years War, was published by Head of Zeus on 15 September 2022. Welcome to Rock, Paper, Swords, Dan Jones! ***This episode was our most streamed during 2023!***

Slaine from 2000AD. Sherlock Holmes. Dr Who. Primeval. Stargate. Return of the Jedi. Ghost-writing for genuine legends of the rap and hip-hop scene.... Our guest today is probably the most prolific and best-selling author you've never heard of! And he also writes for games, including the major Xbox/Playstation hit, Battlefield 3!   Not only that, he used to write the odd story for classic "top-shelf" magazines like Fiesta and Escort, and no, those were NOT about 80's motor cars, they were FAR sexier than an RS2000 or XR2...   Join us today, as we chat with Steven Savile!