Author Interview: A Stranger to Command by Sherwood Smith
- Fiction Fans
- Dec 20, 2023
- 25 min read
Episode 119
Release Date: December 20, 2023
In this week's episode your hosts are joined by Sherwood Smith to talk about A Stranger to Command, prequel to Crown Duel and part of her Sartorias-Deles series. They talk about Sartorias-Deles as a whole and what it's like to finish such a long-spanning series (both in book time and in our time), an outsider's perspective of the now-familiar Marloven Military Academy, seeing a YA romance break up on the page, and edits to appease publishers in the early 2000s.
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Thanks to the following musicians for the use of their songs:
- Amarià for the use of “Sérénade à Notre Dame de Paris” - Josh Woodward for the use of “Electric Sunrise”
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
Episode Transcript*
*this transcript is AI generated, please excuse the mess.
Lilly: 0:00
Hello and welcome to Fiction Fans, a podcast where we read books and other words, too. I'm Lily.
Sara: 0:06
And I'm Sarah, and I am so thrilled that we are once again joined by Sherwood Smith, this time to talk about her novel, A Stranger to Command.
Lilly: 0:14
How are you this evening?
Sherwood: 0:15
Pretty good, thanks. I'm so glad to be back. Thank you for inviting me.
Lilly: 0:20
Oh, we're always thrilled to talk to you about your stuff.
Sara: 0:23
It's, it's true. I mean, you're, you're one of our favorite authors, so it's so, such a delight to have you on.
Lilly: 0:29
Well, before we dive in, what's something great that happened recently?
Sherwood: 0:33
Well, I had a book come out on Tuesday. I think that's pretty great for me anyway.
Lilly: 0:39
And great for all of us, too. That's Antiphony, is that correct?
Sherwood: 0:43
No, Antiphony came out actually in October,
Lilly: 0:46
Oh, okay.
Sherwood: 0:47
which finishes the whole Sartorius Dulles arc, the whole thing. The one that came out Tuesday is a different world. My pandemic project. It was called the Phoenix Feather, and it's four books, very different feel. And, uh, this tribute is the name of it. It's set in that world.
Lilly: 1:04
Awesome. I've read the first one of those, but I'm very behind on the rest.
Sherwood: 1:10
While they're there, one good thing about books is they don't go stale, unlike bread and food.
Lilly: 1:16
Yeah. Sarah, how about you? Anything great lately?
Sara: 1:20
My good thing is that today is the 14th birthday of my parents pugs.
Sherwood: 1:26
Oh,
Sara: 1:27
So, Buddy and Dr. John, their two remaining pugs, turned 14 today. Dr. John is Mr. Squeak's grandfather, so it's a family affair.
Sherwood: 1:36
that's a really good age for pugs.
Sara: 1:39
Yeah, we've never had pugs make it to 14 before, so it's a nice milestone. And they're still, I mean, they have their health issues, but they're still, for the most part, doing okay and are healthy, so.
Lilly: 1:51
Did they get anything special?
Sara: 1:53
We're gonna have a party for them on Friday.
Lilly: 1:55
Oh,
Sherwood: 1:55
Oh! They are living their best life.
Sara: 2:00
They are. Okay.
Lilly: 2:04
that I'm an adult, which means I can make holiday food on regular days. So I made cranberry sauce on Monday and have been eating it on everything. And no one can stop me.
Sherwood: 2:18
Yes. Tell me how long it takes to figure that out.
Lilly: 2:21
Yeah. Which transitions perfectly into what I'm drinking tonight. Because Sarah and I tried to recreate the cranberry lemonade ginger cranberry lemonade from this book. So I used a scoop of homemade cranberry sauce and some ginger simple syrup. And a little bit of red wine and some bubbly water. And it's pretty good. Oh, and lime. And lime juice. Not quite accurate, but it's tasty.
Sherwood: 2:48
Yeah, actually, that's the main ingredients of the recipe. The carbonation, the ginger ale, is kind of what makes it, gives it its kick.
Sara: 2:56
So is it an actual recipe that you have? Nice, because that's also what I'm drinking tonight, is cranberry juice, ginger beer, and fresh squeezed lemon juice.
Sherwood: 3:06
And how does it taste?
Sara: 3:08
It tastes quite lovely. It's a little cold for it, I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be honest. I think, uh, Danarek and Senelac are drinking it in the summer, when they, when they drink it, but I would drink this again.
Sherwood: 3:21
Yeah, it was actually something my mother invented because it was tart rather than sweet.
Lilly: 3:28
I love cranberries. Any excuse, as you can tell. Any excuse to have cranberries. I am all for. How about you, Sherwood? What are you drinking this evening?
Sherwood: 3:37
Hot chocolate.
Lilly: 3:38
Oh, delicious.
Sara: 3:39
Nice.
Lilly: 3:40
That's right for the weather right
Sara: 3:42
Yeah, that is very seasonally appropriate.
Sherwood: 3:45
Well, it's hot down here. Uh, well, not right now. What is it in here? It's 69 in here, so it'll be getting down to where it's comfortable for me in another few hours, but today it was hot.
Lilly: 3:59
So has anyone read anything good lately? Other than, of course, A Stranger to Command.
Sherwood: 4:04
Let's see. I've usually got two or three books going. One is called Shakespeare's Sisters, and it's kind of like a social history slash biography that is about four women writers. Who lived at the time of Shakespeare and what their lives were like. They're all quite different. It's a really good book. Let's see. What am I reading? Fiction.
Lilly: 4:27
So that is non fiction?
Sherwood: 4:29
Yes, it's nonfiction. Yeah.
Lilly: 4:31
Very cool.
Sherwood: 4:32
I've also got another history going, too, actually, biographies of Liu Bang, who was a super famous Chinese figure who started the Han Dynasty in, I think, 200 BC or so. Real interesting figure. Yeah, that's basically it, I've kind of been on a non fiction kick this week.
Sara: 4:54
Those sound fascinating, though.
Lilly: 4:56
You're covering all your bases. Couple different continents, couple different eras. I can't read two books at the same time. I'm so impressed. They just get all smooshed up in my head and I can't follow either of them.
Sherwood: 5:08
I think it's a habit from grad school actually, because before that I read one book at a time, but in those days you're running research and you're checking things. I tended to have like four or five books and then I just got in the habit of going back and forth between books.
Lilly: 5:23
It sounds like a superpower. Sarah, how about you? You read anything good lately?
Sara: 5:28
I actually just started reading Tribute yesterday, so I'm only three chapters in. Reading it last night, and I'm looking forward to continuing to read it later this evening. But I loved The Phoenix Feather, that quartet, and so I'm so excited that you have a new book that's out in the same world.
Sherwood: 5:45
Well, I hope you enjoy it.
Sara: 5:46
If the first three chapters are any indication, I'm going to have a great time.
Sherwood: 5:51
Excellent.
Sara: 5:52
But, not talking about Tribute and The Phoenix Feather, we are here to talk about A Stranger to Command and Sartorius Delos. And you mentioned that you just published Antiphony in October, which, in the blurb, you describe as the last book in this long series. How does it feel to have finished telling the story that you've been working on for so long?
Sherwood: 6:14
It feels good, and it's also, there's a German word, Sehnsucht, and that's very hard to translate. It's kind of like, um, Poinuzzi, I guess, would be close.
Lilly: 6:27
Do you think you're totally finished with the world, or are there a few maybe short stories kicking around in there still?
Sherwood: 6:33
Oh, there's, there's the next generation, but those won't be that arc, with the same purpose.
Lilly: 6:39
I see, so it's finished with this series, not with this universe.
Sherwood: 6:44
Right.
Lilly: 6:44
Got it.
Sherwood: 6:45
There's also a CJ notebooks that I need to finish typing up. Those need a total overhaul, and it's hard to get back into the mindset of a early, like a 13, 14 year old. But, you know, those are progressing along, and they also have an audience of about two, two people, so.
Sara: 7:03
Me! I'm one of them!
Sherwood: 7:06
Well, I am going to finish, though.
Sara: 7:08
Good, I, I really enjoyed the CJ's Notebooks, and so I'm, I'm glad that you are going to publish the rest of them. Your FAQ on your website lists A Stranger to Command under the category of children's stories, and you have a note there that they were written when you were a child. What are you counting as a child? I know that like the CJ's notebooks you did write when you were much younger. Was this written around that time? Were you a couple of years older? Like, what counts as child in this case?
Sherwood: 7:37
I started writing about Senrid just before I turned 15, and once I got Senrid's story, I got a portion of A Stranger to Command. The thing is that I didn't write the whole draft, because there were too many places where I didn't understand what the adults were doing, and I knew that I didn't understand what the adults were doing. I only saw through the boy's point of view. I also, because I was 15, didn't understand what the 18 year olds thought. And so, I wrote some of it, there were scraps of it, and then a couple of decades later, it all dropped into place. So I just finished it.
Lilly: 8:16
Did you end up editing a lot of the original parts that you had written when you were 15, or did you mostly just expand on them?
Sherwood: 8:25
Both.
Lilly: 8:26
This book has a setting that I'm familiar with. I'm not quite as well read as Sarah in the Sartorius Dulles universe, but we did read Inda earlier, and we are now returning to the Marlovan military academy. But Shavrath's experiences in the academy are very different from Inda's. So, can you tell us a little bit about writing about this same location, or this same experience, but now from an outside perspective,
Sherwood: 8:53
Well, that was one of the things that I, I had to figure out. It took some years to come into focus. Problem is, if I address this question, I'll be talking about other books and other arcs. Like, for instance, Gatlap is only mentioned once or twice in Stranger 2 Command, but he's an important motivator for a lot of what Simra did. And I did not understand where he was coming from as a kid. All I saw was the villain face, and I didn't understand what he was up to until basically I was an adult, and then it all came clear, and everything locked into place. And so I was able to take all those childhood scraps and turn them into a broader perspective.
Sara: 9:34
think one thing about this book, uh, in comparison to Indah that struck me was,
Lilly: 9:40
you?
Sara: 9:41
yes, that struck me, was because Shavreth is an outsider. And he is viewing this military academy from an outside perspective. It allows a commentary on the brutality of it and, and kind of a bit of the brutality of the Marlowan society as a whole in a way that isn't present in Indah because Indah is coming from within that society and this is his normal experience.
Sherwood: 10:07
That's right,
Lilly: 10:07
It was very cool seeing both sides of that.
Sara: 10:10
Even though there's a huge period of time in between the two books.
Sherwood: 10:14
800 years,
Lilly: 10:15
That's just so cool. And there are, so I was only getting some surface level off of this, but there were references to Indah in this book, if I'm not mistaken. And even, you know, relatives and things. How did you keep those family trees straight?
Sherwood: 10:31
lots of notes,
Lilly: 10:32
Yeah.
Sherwood: 10:33
lots of notes and images. They're all head movies in my brain. So I see them all as palimpsests. I had to think about how the Academy changed over 800 years. And I did, for about 20 years, I was doing a kind of parallel reading in boarding school memoirs and books about war and strategy and tactics and battle and all that stuff. I had no experience with those. And also, reading history of long standing institutions, one of the things that became clear was that tradition is malleable to a certain extent. You can say we have this long tradition, but tradition is not like a machine. It's not the same. It kind of gets reinvented for each culture. To fit their needs, but also to anchor them to their past, and to their mores, and to their families, and to their country. So, the Academy is, it was the center of Marlowean life, because it's a country of a warrior culture, and that's where they train their warriors. So I had to understand it before I could really better understand the Marlowans. I first wrote about Senrid, just from his point of view. And then the second story, well, the first one was outside point of view. The second one was his. The third one was from CJ's point of view when she's there impersonating his cousin. And she hated his guts, but she had to pretend to be the cousin. But all that gets told in Senrid's story. So, anyway, I had to think about the difference, I had to understand the modern academy, and then I needed to understand how it got that way so that I could tell the end of the story. So, A Stranger to the Man was first, it was the earliest. The only thing I knew about Enda when I was a teenager was, I was making the map, I've showed you guys the globe, haven't I?
Sara: 12:29
have, yeah.
Sherwood: 12:30
So I was making the map that became the globe, and I just kind of got into an altered state of consciousness, and when I, when I was designing the two continents, I thought, ooh, there's a huge tectonic rift here, and this is the Strait. And I thought, what's it called? And I thought, Elgar Strait. What does that mean? And then I just, it just was there. Elgar was a hero not accepted as a hero. The Strait was to settle peace that didn't stay as peace. Basically everything was turned inside out. And I knew that Indah would not even believe it would last a week if it was named after him. I put that in the book, but it does. It persists. Although they have no idea who Elgar is. Everybody has their own view on who he is and where he came from. Which is what you get in history.
Sara: 13:19
Yeah, and I think the way that you weave that into the story really adds huge sense of time for me because you get the feeling that these almost myths, you know, these, these fantastical characters, historical, but people don't, at this point in time, people don't really know their origin. There's a lot that's kind of clouded and mythological about them almost. And I just, I find that fascinating, the way that perspectives. have changed and, and people have become part of popular culture and stories have become part of popular culture in the world of Sartorius Dulles. I think there's a time when they're singing the, and I don't remember the actual name of the ballad, but uh, Ivana Vajir. And I was like, Oh, I, I know that. I remember that from the book.
Sherwood: 14:06
Yes, Ivan of Goldthunder was the name of the ballad,
Sara: 14:10
Yes,
Sherwood: 14:11
Ivan of the heir of family. Yeah, Leander, who was an archivist, says, Ivan never existed, he's just one of your Marlevin myths. Then Fox comes back out of time and then tells the Marlevins, Yeah, I knew it. Of course, the true Fox record is finally discovered.
Lilly: 14:29
You mentioned change earlier and how much change would have gone into this culture over the course of 800 years. And in fact, during this book, we see a little bit of it happening now. We're seeing a time when girls are allowed in the academy. And that also created an extra sort of perspective of outsiders, right? We have the main character, who's a foreigner, and then also these Girls who are accepted into the academy, but not really integrated into the academy. Which created some interesting conversations between, uh, Shevrith and, I'm gonna pronounce her name wrong, Senelac?
Sherwood: 15:04
Yeah, Centelac,
Lilly: 15:05
Okay. That was a nice little intro to their relationship though. It started the pebbles rolling, I guess.
Sherwood: 15:12
Yes. Very much so. Yeah.
Lilly: 15:14
Well, I think it's time to get into the fun spoiler time, but before we do, I have a question for Sarah. Sarah, who should read this book?
Sara: 15:22
you should read this book, A, if you read Crown Duel and enjoyed it. You will definitely like getting a view of Daenerys perspective as a younger person. If you've been reading the Sartorius Dallis books, obviously you should, you should keep reading them. You should read this book. But if you are not familiar with the world at all, and you want a fish out of water, coming of age story, I think you would enjoy this because you don't have to have. Even though obviously it helps, you don't have to have a ton of context for the world as a whole in order to understand the story and enjoy the story.
Lilly: 15:56
Although, actually, that made me think of a question. This book is marketed as, subtitled as, a prequel to Crown Duel. Sherwood, in your opinion, should someone read Crown Duel first, or should they read this book first? Do you think it matters?
Sherwood: 16:11
I think it depends on what kind of a reader. If they want, you know, light hearted romance. Crown Jewel is the one to read, and then maybe this would be interesting because they'd find out how the Daenerys became a hero, what made him the way he is. But if you're not particularly interested in romance, but you like some military action, maybe world building type of stuff, then I would start with The Stranger to Command.
Lilly: 16:37
I read Crown Duel first, and I am interested in romance, so I guess I've followed your directions without knowing it.
Sara: 16:43
Although I will say that this book was not published when we first read Crown Jewel.
Lilly: 16:48
Not the point.
Sherwood: 16:50
Yes, well there's that, so it wouldn't have to be for readers since that time.
Lilly: 16:55
Yes. The remainder of this episode contains spoilers. Hehehe.
Sara: 17:08
So I wanted to talk about the romance between Donric and Senelac. Because Obviously for people who have read Crown Jewel, we know that he's not going to end up with her, but I found it really interesting that we see the romance not work out on the page, because I feel like in a lot of novels that feature young adult characters, when they have a romance It lasts for the duration of the novel, and then if, if that's not who they end up with, ultimately, it kind of fails off the page, you know, after the story has ended. So it, it felt really interesting to see this relationship explicitly not work out.
Sherwood: 17:49
Yeah, one of the things I was thinking about when I wrote it, and I thought, well, this will never get published, because I read a lot of YA, is that actually very few of us end up with the people we dated as teenagers. Some of us look back at them and go, oh my god, what the hell? each relationship we have, hopefully we learn something from it. And so, Vedomirik learned a lot from Senlea, and she learned a lot from him, but it was never going to work out. She was older and more experienced, and she just wanted a light hearted flirt because she was super attracted to him. She expected to control the whole thing and have the attraction die away when she was done with him, and it didn't. She had to make a decision that, no, this is not going to be my life. He's going home. I have no interest in his home whatsoever. He won't stay here the way I want him to, so I have to dump him. Better if he dumps me, because I'm still attracted to him. Damn it!
Sara: 18:49
yeah.
Sherwood: 18:49
it!
Lilly: 18:50
dare the unattainable ones be cute.
Sara: 18:55
It's also interesting, though, because even though, I mean, and he says this, like, you want me to be the villain, they end up, I don't want to say it's an entirely amicable split, but like, it's not this kind of, you know, the other party is the worst person in the world, they do recognize that, you know, whatever emotional response they might get. have to the ending of the relationship. There are reasons that the other person acted that way. And so it's a very reasonable relationship, which is also, I think, something you don't see much in, in YA. I
Sherwood: 19:31
as a villain. Neither do I. And eventually, very quickly for her, and a little longer for him, they just dwindle to very fond memories. He went off to Colin, where, oh boy, did he get a good lesson in flirting. He was super popular, and there were lots of cute girls who were really into him. But his heart was guarded by them, and so he, he wasn't going to let himself get hurt that way twice, if he could help it. And I think one of the things that drew him to Meliara was that she was utterly the opposite of Sennaia.
Lilly: 20:06
I don't think I'm going to be able to stop myself from immediately picking up Crown Duel after we finish recording. I haven't read it in so long, but reading A Stranger to Command just like, hit me right, I don't know, right in the nostalgia guts.
Sherwood: 20:19
What I hoped was that Brown Duel would read differently once you knew that Dondrek and Duelist passed.
Sara: 20:25
think it does. I have read Crown Duel a couple of times since reading A Stranger to Command, because this is, I read A Stranger to Command previously, it's This is not the first time I've read it. And it, it does change the way you look at the events in the story and Vidonrik's character. So I think you're definitely successful in that respect. Do you have any plans to write about his time in Koh En?
Sherwood: 20:48
No, I think it's better, I've thought about it, and then I thought, you know, it's better to leave it up to the imagination. Particularly if you've read some of the others, you know what Kalenda's like. And so, it's more fun maybe to imagine, you know, him flirting with this or that person, and all the fans, and the ribbons, and all that kind of stuff. I am going to come back to the kids adventures, particularly the daughter. She has a huge heart, and the person she ends up with is Real interesting. She's the one who was immersed into the pool when she was in utero, which you see in, oh gosh, which, which one was that? See, I think of the whole thing as the arc, as an arc, and sometimes I forget where the book divisions are. But anyway, when Meliara, it was in the middle of the war. I think it's the last of the war novels. She is about to deliver her third child, her daughter, and she ends up submersed in a pool that's full of magic and folk book, and it affects that child big time. So Aurya has her own arc, and I'd like to live long enough to write that.
Lilly: 21:51
You're teasing us now. Yes, knock on wood. Going back to our conversation about the breakup and how, I'll say, good natured it was, I think part of what did that, for me, was the way you used perspective. The whole book is in close third person, and it mostly follows Vedanrik, but we do also get some sort of internal thoughts. Of some of the secondary and tertiary characters, which I think really helped humanize even the antagonists in this story.
Sherwood: 22:23
Yeah, it's actually omniscient point of view, like the rest of the arc, it's just the narrator doesn't come forward and talk as happens in the other ones, some of the other ones. But yeah, you do, you get everybody's perspective.
Sara: 22:35
So we talked a little bit about how, while this is, I'm going to call it kind of a standalone, um, it takes place simultaneously with major series events, and there's a lot of stuff going on in the background that you reference, but don't bring to the forefront because that's not necessarily relevant to the Danrick story. Can you talk a little bit about how you chose references to include or not include in a way that doesn't alienate readers who haven't followed the series?
Sherwood: 23:05
That's a hard one because my brain doesn't work that way. I see a head moving, and for me, it's all the interconnections are just there. Motherlands are going to talk about their history. They're going to talk about India, because they've grown up hearing those stories. Senrit is going to be thinking globally, because he's been forced to. So, all of those things are just part of their lives, and they're going to think about them. I did try as hard as I could to give at least some context for all those, and it made it easier when I stayed with Vedanrit, because he would go, I don't know anything about that, and he'd get some explanation. But they're all interconnected.
Sara: 23:43
Yeah, part of the fun, so the first time I read this, I hadn't read much of the other books. I think maybe I had read the Indah books, but certainly not any of the other modern Sartorius Dela's books. And so this time, which I have, I've read up to, I think, the North Under War arc. So I, like, there were a lot of references that I would see, and I was like, oh, I get what's going on here. But I don't think that my enjoyment the first time was. ever lessened by not understanding what specific, like, reference to world events you were making.
Sherwood: 24:18
Good. Well, the first one, I, I was afraid nobody would ever take these because they were very much their own thing. They didn't follow the usual structure, particularly of YA. When I looked at them all, Crown Duel was the only one that really stood alone. It stood alone enough so that I actually took out the SD and put light references to Ren's World because I had sold the Ren books to Jane Yolen books, and Jane Yolen was the only one interested in looking at this one. And so, you know, I fiddled with just really outside references, and then she split it into two stories. In those days, this was pre Harry Potter, publishers believed that no kid would read a book over 60 to 80, 000 words. They were all very thin, which, of course, Turned out to be crap, and all of us who are reading knew that that was crap, but, you know, publishers are publishers, they have their theories, and, you know, and a lot of it's about royalties and all that, but we wouldn't go there. But Crown Jewels stood on its own, so I thought, okay, well, let's just try, and to my surprise, it got accepted. So when, when it got resold, For the paperback, I said, can I please put it back on SD where it belongs? And the editor said, sure. And also, I put back the Flavik scene, when he tries to seduce her. So I'd taken that out. I was afraid at that time. Y. A. did not have any sex in it, no gay characters, so all of that stuff is coded. I've been writing coded for years. There are several gay characters, like Derek, in Ramona's court, but it couldn't be overt. And I put the Flavik scene back in, and it was the regular length that it was supposed to be, that I wrote when I was 21. I wrote the first Part, when I was 20, and the second, uh, I was like 23, I was in grad school. So, I knew that young, more or less young people, would read long. What do I know?
Sara: 26:16
So does, does that mean that if we were to find a first edition, first printing, it would be a slightly different story? Because it would have those references removed, it would have that scene removed.
Sherwood: 26:28
Yeah, well, it's not very different, because the references are super superficial. Like, the Queen of Sartor has another name for Rentworld. You know, that type of thing. Not a character. It doesn't matter. It doesn't affect the story at all. Just little things like that.
Lilly: 26:46
If you had all the time in the world, infinite time, would you want to go back and edit some of your early works so that you didn't have to have these characters coded, they could just be on the page?
Sherwood: 26:58
Oh yeah, there's so much rewriting I'd like to do. Stranger to Man I was looking over. Actually I was reading, listening to it. It's the only audio book of my stuff that I like. I thought the guy did a really good job. Although he messed up a few words, that's okay. A lot of the prose is just bad prose. It's not his fault. I thought, oh God, wouldn't I love to rewrite this thing and just clean up the bad prose. But anyway, you know, it is what it is. The biggest thing I would do if I had all the time in the world, and I will do, if I get the rights to A Sword Named Truth back, is split it back up into its pieces, because it just doesn't work as one huge thing. But I was desperate to get the whole story out, because time was passing, and passing, and passing, and passing, and Daw was holding onto these things. And so, I just stuffed it together, because I wanted to get to the end. I wanted to have Ben Tiffany come out before I dropped dead. And each birthday comes along, you know, your chances get narrower and narrower. So, I would break it back up.
Lilly: 28:01
That's interesting. So, Crown Duel and Court Duel ideally are one entity, one book, whereas this other series you would rather have as separate works.
Sherwood: 28:11
Yeah, I would pull them apart and rejoin the Blood Mage text where it belongs. It would be a different structure. Nothing would change, except the structure.
Lilly: 28:21
Is that mostly because of pacing, or?
Sherwood: 28:24
Well, I think it was really confusing for new readers. Very confusing for new readers who didn't want to read the Indah books, just wanted to start with, you know, the new series. I suggest to anybody who has an interest, if they want to try reading any of these, to please don't start with that one. Start with Indah if you're an adult and you don't want to read the kid ones. If you're willing to read the kid ones, then read Stranger in Command, and Crown Duel, and Spy Princess. So My Princess is really important, even though it's kid point of view. But Pater, that was another one I thought would never get published because he's a hero and he's disabled and he doesn't fight, he's a pacifist, but just crucially important. I said, ah, crack, I'm sorry, the first book, I'm talking about one book and I'm blabbing about others.
Lilly: 29:15
We asked,
Sara: 29:16
Yeah.
Lilly: 29:18
you mentioned that you, you know, obviously had started writing a stranger to command in bits and pieces when you were younger, and then returned to it when you were older. Were there any scenes that surprised you?
Sherwood: 29:29
I don't think it worked quite that way. It was more like the sun came up on the whole story. The early stuff was all just kid point of view about house rivalries and the games and a little bit about the training without understanding what the training is for just from a kid point of view. Competitions and that sort of thing. And it wasn't till years later that I see the why of the training and what they were building for. And then I understood a lot more about where Sibyl was coming from. Because he was struggling with a lot of stuff.
Sara: 30:03
What would you like readers to take away from A Stranger to Command?
Sherwood: 30:07
It depends on the type of reader. When I was looking it over, I thought, wow, you know, with all these dictators these days, and would be dictators, because really, when I was writing it, the world was a lot different, and I thought, these villains, you know, it's really not all that relevant, but, you know, it's a fun adventure, but I was reading it today, and I thought, you know, all this talk about tyrants, and what they do to governments, It's actually become more relevant than it was when I first published it, and I thought I would like a teenager who actually read this book to come away feeling that, yes, Maybe there's something I can do on my level to help my country if we band together, all of us, who think that there's something wrong and we need to fix it. But that sounds awfully arrogant. And it also sounds preachy. So maybe I should just say, no, I want them to come away and say, oh, yeah, adventure story, not bad.
Lilly: 31:00
Ah, but subconsciously they'll have absorbed that message without even realizing it.
Sherwood: 31:06
It's pretty on the nose.
Lilly: 31:07
Yeah. Can you tell us a little bit about any current projects you're working on? Anything that you have coming out in the near future?
Sherwood: 31:19
Well, right now I'm writing, I don't want to say because there's a fun surprise. waiting for the tribute reader who has also read the Phoenix Feather books. So,
Sara: 31:29
Oh, I'm excited.
Sherwood: 31:31
the one I'm working on now carries on from that point, sort of. It's not a continuation, it's a couple of centuries later, but there's a definite through line. As for the SD ones I'm working on, catching up with the CJ one, oh gosh, I've got in the middle of one where CJ and the girls decided to make a band, to torment Jilo. I've got to get that one typed up in the rest of, you know, the rest of that whole series. I've got new covers for them. And then there's one that I don't know what people are going to think, but I've planned it for decades. And that is the Ravel novella, the second generation. There's a threesome. So there's two guys and a girl, but it's kind of a rivalry and kind of not.
Lilly: 32:16
Well, I can't wait to see how that ends.
Sherwood: 32:19
Oh my goodness. Oh, one of the first thing that I got, and I was really young when I said, what's the most romantic thing possible? And I immediately saw it and I saw them. I just thought this is so them is riding into a ballroom on a horse and grabbing up the heroine. Well, he's going to have something to say about that. And that's what really begins, but it's a great image. Yes,
Lilly: 32:48
It takes sweep her off her feet to a new level.
Sherwood: 32:51
yes, yes. Oh, it's got all the tropes, all the tropes, but it's got to turn inside out.
Lilly: 32:57
I can't wait.
Sherwood: 32:58
Yeah, that one's next. As soon as I finish the CJ ones, that one's next.
Sara: 33:02
And remind me again how many CJ's Notebooks there are?
Sherwood: 33:05
Well, I believe there will be five. I'm pretty sure it's just the five. Three of them are already out. The fourth one I'm finishing up now. And then six is world events. That's when the Marcians get dragged into world events. So it needs major overhauling. I haven't typed it up yet. It's still in the handwriting.
Lilly: 33:24
And where should our listeners go for up to date news on when these wonderful things are coming out? Your blog, I assume, or your website?
Sherwood: 33:31
Website is better. I've got a bibliography page there and I also have a Patreon where whatever I'm working on, I post chapters every few days. So people could follow that if they like that format. Some do, some don't. Some wait for the book to come out altogether.
Lilly: 33:49
and I are perfect opposites on that question.
Sara: 33:53
Yeah, I like being able to get your chapters because I support you on Patreon, but uh, I have to admit that I do wait for everything to be published.
Sherwood: 34:03
Yeah, a bunch of people do and I, I'm fine with that. I mean, I'd appreciate the support, so if they'd rather wait for the book to completely be done. A okay with me, but other ones, uh, several people have said, you know, I just like reading a chapter over my morning coffee. One chapter. It's awesome. It's like, uh, the old cereals, you know, that you would watch or read. So any way people want to is okay with me. But anyway, all that stuff is on my website.
Sara: 34:31
And uh, are you posting on any social media? Blue Sky? Twitter?
Sherwood: 34:35
I dropped Twitter when it went nuts, toxic.
Lilly: 34:38
Yeah.
Sherwood: 34:40
Now I'm out of there. I'm trying to make myself do Blue Sky. It's kind of basic, you know, there's no threading or anything, and I'm trying to read it, but mostly it seems to be a lot of people like me saying, buy my book, buy my book, buy my book, rather than talking about the books. So, you know, I don't stick with it very long. If there were conversations Like LiveJournal used to be, Real Conversations. DreamWith is also kind of diminished because there are so many platforms now. I have not looked into TikTok. Yes, I don't think, it's mostly for young people. And I think they take one look at this old face and go, Oh, okay. So. I'll just leave it to the young people.
Lilly: 35:23
Well, thank you so much for joining us to talk about A Stranger to Command. I loved it. It feels silly to say you wrote it for me, but you did.
Sherwood: 35:33
Well, why do you say that?
Lilly: 35:34
So I read Crown Duel when I was quite young. And so having this as like, it's a prequel, but reading it afterwards and having that distance because I haven't reread Crown Duel in quite a while, it feels like such the perfect like re entry into that. little section of this much larger world. And I'm so excited to reread Crown Jewel for the first time in 20 years.
Sherwood: 35:59
Yeah, it's weird to think the paperback came out 20 years ago.
Lilly: 36:03
I might be rounding. I think that sounds about right though.
Sherwood: 36:06
I think it came out in either 2001 or 2002, I believe.
Sara: 36:12
I bet Google will tell me. Let's see, Wikipedia says it was originally published in 1997, that was when it was separate books, and then the combination, the single volume, was 2002.
Sherwood: 36:25
Yeah, that's what I thought.
Lilly: 36:27
That's this one right here.
Sara: 36:29
Yes.
Sherwood: 36:30
Yeah, I cleaned, oh, that was so full of errors. Oh my goodness. I'm so glad that I have a cleaned up version out now, because it drove me nuts for years.
Sara: 36:41
Well, I can say that reading it as a kid, I don't think I noticed any errors.
Lilly: 36:50
Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Fiction Fans.
Sara: 36:54
Come disagree with us. We are on Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok, at FictionFansPod. You can also email us at FictionFansPod at gmail. com.
Lilly: 37:05
If you enjoyed the episode, please rate and review on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, and follow us wherever your podcasts live.
Sara: 37:14
We also have a Patreon where you can support us and find our show notes and a lot of other nonsense.
Lilly: 37:20
Thanks again for listening, and may your villains always be defeated. Bye!
