sword of the taka samurai

The paperback edition of <em>Cold Blood</em> has been released this morning on Amazon, which is currently filling pre-orders and taking new orders. I am delighted that the Toot Sweet team was able to get the book out for the holidays. We at Toot Sweet Ink will be celebrating in the coming days like most other people, except I will be working on Cold Heart and Laura will be getting out our first hardback, Cold Sake, with its new cover, sans the excerpt from Haru....

I expect to beat the March 16th date, but have set it at that so that I don’t disappoint. The Yamabuki story takes a turn as she enters a bandit town, Minesaki, in Nagato Prefecture, where she meets none other than the Rising Sun General, which brings unexpected consequences. http://www.amazon.com/dp/0991266773

The Tale of Genji was written in the late 900s C.E. by a woman known to history by the name Murasaki. The work is considered by many to be the earliest novel ever written. The author was believed to have been a lady in the emperor’s court and her observations are said to be a thinly disguised fictionalization of the people she knew. Most people who are familiar with Japanese literature will say the work is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, work in Japanese literature....

The Yamabuki series is inspired by a 12th-century woman chronicled in historic writings of the times. It is said Yamabuki was beautiful and that she accompanied Yoshinaka, The Rising Sun General, and Tomoe Gozen, a more famous woman warrior on their adventures and into battle. Some accounts even say she was a general who led troops into ferocious battles. In writing I hoped as much as possible to avoid setting the action in Tokugawa era, which is familiar to many fans of historic Japan....

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