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

Our guest today is Darren Hardy, manager of the UK Author and Editorial Programmes at Amazon. Before that Darren was UK Manager for Kindle Direct Publishing. With nearly 20 years working at Amazon, Darren is the perfect person to answer all our questions about what goes on behind the scenes at KDP and what new and exciting plans Amazon has for the future. Join us today as we chat about things like...

Our guest today is Matt Lewis. Matt is an author and historian of the medieval period, with a particular interest in the Wars of the Roses and Richard III. He has written biographies of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, Henry III, Richard Duke of York, and Richard III, as well as accounts of The Anarchy, the Wars of the Roses, and Rebellion in the Middle Ages. Matt is also chair of the Richard th...

Today's fantastic guest is Theodore Brun, author of The Wanderer Chronicles. He has a brand new book out NOW called A SAVAGE MOON , which Matthew read and endorsed thusly: 'A fever dream of dark lusts and an ancient evil.  A Savage Moon  drips with passion, betrayal, loyalty and loss. A wonderful book!' We spoke about his work and his life in general, discovering his life is often as e...

Something a little different today - we have no guests for a change! Instead, Steven interviews Matthew about his brand new book A DAY OF RECKONING, the third in his A Time for Swords series, which came out yesterday. It's a fun episode covering various aspects of the writing/publishing process, and Matthew even tells us the title of his NEXT book (the Western he's been talking about for a...

Our guest today is Angus Donald , author of the Outlaw Chronicles , about a medieval gangster called Robin Hood, a 17th-century series about an unusual but rather brilliant chap called Holcroft Blood. And writing as Angus Macallan, he has also tried his hand at fantasy with the Gates of Stone . His most recent novels are in the Fire Born series, set in 8th century Europe. Book four in the series,...

Our guest today is Paul Finch. Paul Finch is an English author and scriptwriter. He has a diverse and very successful career, from the popular TV programme The Bill, to horror and fantasy stories and films, Doctor Who spin-off stories and the incredibly successful gritty crime series of DS Mark Heck Heckenberg novels, with over 1 MILLION book sales! Paul’s latest pivot has been to move into the hi...

Our guest today is Ethan Bale, author of The Swords of the White Rose series. Book 1, Hawker and the King's Jewel came out last year and the follow up, The Lost Prince, has just been published. Ethan Bale (Clifford Beal), is a former defence journalist. Despite writing about modern military technology for much of his career, he was always passionate about history, particularly the Renaissance...

Alex Gough is an author of Roman historical adventures. The Carbo Chronicles, including Watchmen of Rome and Bandits of Rome, was written as a result of a lifelong obsession with ancient Rome, and the culmination of a lot of research into the underclasses of the time. He has also written a collection of adventures following Carbo and other characters from Watchmen of Rome, where you can learn more...

This is a super short episode just to give listeners an update on how we're planning on moving forward with the podcast. Matthew's latest book, "Forest of Foes", gets a paperback release, and Steven has also just made a brand new MODERN DAY short story available for pre-order, called "Have You Seen This?" so we discuss those a little bit too. Enjoy, and we really hope y...

TRIGGER WARNING! At 13:16 there's a VERY creepy answerphone message, listener discretion advised, don't listen alone in the dark... Today’s guest Robin Warder has written articles for various websites including Cracked.com, but he’s most well known for his excellent podcast The Trail Went Cold which is a true crime podcast he’s been doing since 2016, publishing more than 300 episodes in th...

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 othe...

Ben Kane will need little introduction to many of our listeners, but here goes anyway. Ben is a historical fiction novelist, best known for his books set in the ancient world, particularly the Roman empire. His series include The Forgotten Legion, Spartacus, and the Hannibal series of books.  In 2013, Ben along with fellow novelists Anthony Riches and Russell Whitfield - walked the entire length o...

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 p...

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 album RökFlöte, Norse mythology, Vladimir Putin appearing at a Tull meet-and-greet, the time journalists demanded details of his up...

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 am...

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 s...

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 Ander...

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...

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...

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,...

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...

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 recor...

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 w...

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 "to...