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Without realizing it, I had made a big deal out of Yamabuki’s armor.

Introducing the reader to an unfamiliar constructed world takes patience, care, and research.

Historic fiction is a slippery slope. I am currently writing about Japan in the historic period in and around the Gempei War—a war of historic record. My main character is Yamabuki, a female warrior, a person who is recorded in some annals, but whose life is almost unknown. How much can a writer make up while entertaining her audience, while staying more or less faithful to the period? Some writers will go completely around this problem....

“The Pillow Book of a Samurai,” has been long in coming. I have been thinking on the main character, Yamabuki, for some time now. It’s a genre that is narrow and under served, at least in my view – heroic women who are more than superficial characters. I have been working at this, off and on, for a number of years, with my day job usually pushing away writing time....

To most Westerners, Japanese samurai films show Japan after the Tokugawa Shogunate–from about 1600 and onward–replete with two-sword retainers with shaved pates, clean shaven for the most part, and living in a very regimented society with strict adherence to the rules set down by the Shogunate. But like my earlier post, “Murasaki’s World – Heian Japan,” Japan was different then, as were the warriors. Some examples: the warriors wore less sophisticated armor than in later periods, but still unmistakable Japanese....