Dr. Guy Windsor is a world-renowned instructor and a pioneering researcher of medieval and renaissance martial arts. He has been teaching the Art of Arms full-time since founding The School of European Swordsmanship in Helsinki, Finland, in 2001. His day job is finding and analysing historical swordsmanship treatises, figuring out the systems they represent, creating a syllabus from the treatises for his students to train with, and teaching the system to his students all over the world. Guy is the author of numerous classic books about the art of swordsmanship and has consulted on swordfighting game design and stage combat. He developed the card game, Audatia, based on Fiore dei Liberi's Art of Arms, his primary field of study. In 2018 Edinburgh University awarded him a PhD by Research Publications for his work recreating historical combat systems. When not studying medieval and renaissance swordsmanship or writing books Guy can be found in his shed woodworking or spending time with his family.
New book: YOUR new book?
Hi!
If you are interested in writing any kind of training manual, or explanatory non-fiction, or you just want a window into how I produce my books, From Your Head to Their Hands: how to write, publish, and market training manuals for historical martial artists is for you.
Here's the blurb:
“Our favourite writer of instructional manuals”- Neal Stephenson, from his foreword to Swordfighting, for writers, game designers, and martial artists.
Guy Windsor’s historical martial arts training manuals are legendary. His first was published in 2004, and he’s been producing them ever since. They generate about half his income. So he is expert in writing, publishing, and marketing books for historical martial artists, and in this book he’ll teach you how to do it.
The goal of training manuals is to teach skills. This one will teach you:
- How to write well
- How to plan your book, or write without a plan
- How to get reader feedback as you go
- How to avoid procrastination and imposter syndrome
- What tools to use
- How to write without destroying your body
- How to incorporate photos and videos
- How to edit your work
- What should be outsourced
- How to publish: commercial, indy, or something else?
- What metadata you need, and how to create it
- How to choose your publishing platform
- How to market your book
- How to find your readers
- How to launch
- Everything you need to know about copyright and piracy
- The best book marketing strategy of all time.
Also included: Guy’s article Show Your Work: how to communicate your historical martial arts research with the historical martial arts community.
If you’ve ever wanted to write a training manual for historical martial arts (or anything else), this book will show you how to do it. Buy it, read it, and get writing!
It is currently only available at swordschool.shop; it'll go live on other platforms in perhaps three months. My recent bout of covid stopped me from getting the audiobook done, but I'll be in the studio next week, and should have the audiobook out in a month or so.
I hope you enjoy the book- and that it inspires and helps you to write your own!
yours,
Guy
Guy Windsor's Swordschool
Dr. Guy Windsor is a world-renowned instructor and a pioneering researcher of medieval and renaissance martial arts. He has been teaching the Art of Arms full-time since founding The School of European Swordsmanship in Helsinki, Finland, in 2001. His day job is finding and analysing historical swordsmanship treatises, figuring out the systems they represent, creating a syllabus from the treatises for his students to train with, and teaching the system to his students all over the world. Guy is the author of numerous classic books about the art of swordsmanship and has consulted on swordfighting game design and stage combat. He developed the card game, Audatia, based on Fiore dei Liberi's Art of Arms, his primary field of study. In 2018 Edinburgh University awarded him a PhD by Research Publications for his work recreating historical combat systems. When not studying medieval and renaissance swordsmanship or writing books Guy can be found in his shed woodworking or spending time with his family.
Hi! I’m writing this in Minneapolis St Paul airport, waiting for a delayed flight to Chicago to connect to my flight home. This three-week trip has been extremely eventful, so much so that I’m going to split telling you about it over a couple of emails. After a magnificent week with Jessica Finley (as you no doubt recall from the last missive), I went to see my friend Jason James, currently stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas. Just getting “on post” (as these military types call it) involved a...
Hi! And greetings from stormy Kansas. I arrived on Wednesday night after a more eventful than is ideal trip. There was a medical emergency on the plane (I’m the wrong kind of doctor to be useful there, but the right kind of doctor literally ran across a row of seats to get to the action); then there was a queue at passport control that took over 2 hours, while I had an hour and 40 minutes to catch my connecting flight; which was fortunately delayed just long enough that I made it, though my...
Hi! Guns in Helsinki While I was in Helsinki my friend Jan Kukkamäki took me shooting, with his family. It’s the first time since leaving Finland in 2016 that I got to shoot my own guns again. Here they are: A Ruger Mk II 22/45 semi-automatic target pistol; a Ruger bearcat .22 revolver, and a Ruger GP100 .357 Mag. revolver. That was much fun… but then Jan introduced me to the Remington New Army (1860s, reproduction) percussion-cap revolver… It’s a lovely gun, which you have to load chamber by...