Page turner picks (Column)
Making Wooden Arrows – A Master’s Guide By John Potter 2020 Edition/90 pages I believe the making of wooden arrows, and their pairing to the archer and the bow as one of the truest skills in archery. And sadly, one…
Tag archery
War of the Feathers – Part I
The beginning of a war, the arrows of one nation against the griffin worshiping ideology of another nation.
Following on from the prologue published last month, Evander Penrose must endure against the surrealist nature of this conflict and build a defence to repel vast odds.
How Archers go blind…
They go blind, not suddenly, not dramatically, but like stone crumbling beneath ivy. A slow erosion hidden under the costume of stillness. Archers — who speak so often of form and silence, of the sacred breath before release — rarely…...
Forever Drawn:A Day with the White Feather
There’s a kind of hush in the troughlands of Fiorbhia Farm when the dew clings still to the grass, before the sun decides if it’ll bake or bless the day. And there I stood, half a ghost, half a child…...
Chanjion
Animosity between Tevaller and Chanjion began when a Tevaller King had a vision of a serpent people putting nations in chains, believed to be the Chanjion. The Tevaller began occupying Chanjion land thereafter. Chanjion had no army, and at the…
Aleksander Wat and Japanese Archery
Japanese Archery By Aleksander Wat (in Marcin Malek poetical interpretation) 1The hand to the bowstring speaks:Bend to me, yield.The bowstring to the hand replies:Strike bold, be steeled.The bowstring whispers to the shaft:O arrow, flee!The arrow to the bowstring calls:Unshackle me!The…
The Limits of Precision: How Much Tuning Does an Archer Really Need?
Precision has long been the archer’s silent companion, lingering in the spaces between breath and release. The draw is steady, the fingers poised on the string, the arrow ready to carve its path through the air. And yet, as much…...
Germany at Full Draw
There is a moment before the shot, when the world folds into silence, taut as the string between limb and nock. It is not hesitation. It is not doubt. It is the brief, unbearable stillness before intent becomes action, before…...
War of the Feathers
When a holy beast is slain by a rogue and so-called Maytoni prince retribution comes fast for the Maytoni nation. Their neighbours, the Xellcarrians, once bonded allies, are seeking blood as recompense.
Royalism is akin to heresy within Maytoni, going against their values of equality and equity - but this hardly stops families with bloodlines rooted in lost riches and prestige.
As the prelude to total war plays out on the Mayne Peninsula, Evander Penrose of the Maytoni Summiteers, elite archers, finds himself in unofficial command. He understands the contrived origins of the conflict, and wants the so-called prince handed over. Yet with the preparator in flight, and thirty thousand Xellcarrians on the horizon, Evander must hold off annexation, against six to one odds, whilst doing everything he can to prevent further escalation.
Yet the Xellcarrians are not his true enemy, as the Maytoni pro-royalist elements seek to ensure bloody total war erupts to ensure the resurgence of their own power.
For anyone who has read The Phoenix Archer, the name Evander Penrose and the War of the Feathers will be recognisable. This is his story about a defining event which has a profound effect on his character in The Phoenix Archer follow up, Orion's Legacy.
A Window and a Mirror
There was a time when the world was easier to understand. When the grainy flicker of Soviet cinema could paint the world not as it was, but as it ought to be. And in those darkened halls, amid the scratchy…...
DWild Sinusoid Limbs
Sinusoid limbs are multi-cam patented limbs by Davide Vicini from Genoa in Italy. Davide worked for many years as a naval carpenter, where he learnt about the different characteristics of various woods, fibreglass and carbon. This coupled with the fact…...
Archers Talkin’ Archery – Leeanne Halliday
More quick interviews with archers here in the north and elsewhere. Archers Talkin' Archery is back!
A Bow Drawn Against the Wind – Akira Kurosawa and his vision of men
Stories are not told. They are loosed, like arrows from a drawn bow, their fletching kissed by breath, their paths uncertain yet inevitable. A storyteller does not own the tale—he only pulls the string, lets it fly, watches it carve…
Erased by Fire and Time
The first thing they saw was the light. It came from the sea, from beyond the edges of the world they had known, a gleam upon the water like the sun’s fractured reflection. Then the ships, too vast to be…
The Shadow of Arrows: Thomas de Montagu and the Longbowmen of the Hundred Years’ War.
At times, especially within historical investigations, things become fleeting and elusive. The past ceases to be a fragile record and becomes the superficial memory of a chronicler. However, there are moments when it stirs, gathering a strange, electric energy, and…
From Ancient Bows to Soviet Arrows: Archery in Russian and Soviet Literature
I grew up amongst books, although never knowing for sure whether it was a blessing or a burden. In those days, you didn’t choose what you read. You took what was given, what was printed, what had survived the censors,…
Mercy
The sixth in a series of short stories about The Archery Guild and its members, set in a fantasy world, known as Anordaithe.
Here you are finally introduced to a mythical figure only spoken about thus far in the pages of The Phoenix Archer.
Robin Hood Shoot
There isn’t much evidence to support the existence of Robin Hood. Which is sad really. The Americans can claim Fred Bear and Howard Hill, of course. But it is unlikely the gallantry and romance of undermining a greedy and corrupt…...
a whisper in the dark
You think you understand violence. You think you’ve seen it, measured it, weighed it in your hands like something you could master, something that bends to the will of the wielder. You think a weapon is just a tool. But…
An archer’s spindle of literature Column
I first stumbled upon Irish Celtic mythology when I was a lad of fourteen, a scrawny thing with a wild imagination and a stubborn curiosity for the unknown. It was my older sister who planted the seed, gifting me a…...