I’ve had the idea for this story in my head for several years. Or, rather, I’ve had the idea for a probably not all that funny joke image in my head for several years and the invitation to contribute to Fight Like a Girl Two provided the ideal opportunity to write the story which would have generated the joke image if the story had been a standalone with its own cover to illustrate.

How can you refuse to read something with a background like that, right?

Lady Cona’s name is a subtle homage to the mighty Conan, whom I’ve loved and wanted to be since I was a little girl. I love old school sword and sorcery, grew up with it, was always aware from childhood that it maybe had some issues with women. Seriously: I kind of assumed it was obvious to everyone that the protagonists were borderline fascist rapey types living in a toxic and deeply unpleasant world of male pain, it still comes as a shock if someone has a different reading. I now write fantasy that interrogates gender roles and constructions of masculinity, goes deep into the lived experience of men and women inhabiting a Conanesque hyper-masculine world. What would it be like to be a woman in a world which fetishes male warriors? To be a mother raising sons to be warrior men? To be a man with Conan as his role model? Nightmarish, as far as I can see. Crushing. Destructive. And, as I’ve said many times before and will doubtless say many times again – a huge rush of power and wonderful and sexual excitement and fun. Obviously I always wanted to be Conan and still do. Hence: Lady Cona. Fights like the teenage girls in my home town shoplift. No interest in morality or ethics or deep questions. Just wants to have fun and get shiny things. The probably not all that funny joke image in my head which inspired her is a gender flip of the classic Conan cover, the barbarian warlord, sword erect and throbbing, mounted on the enemy’s ruin, naked woman clutching his tree-trunk thigh. So here she is in bloodied leathers, sword in hand, feet on corpses, a teenage boy before her all adoring all long fingers and long tongue. Only then I had a conversation with a friend at BristolCon, and she took a bit of a twist. About which I’ll say two things, mainly directed at that pedant who’ll 1 star it as ‘unrealistic’ within an hour of publication: 1) it’s sword and figgin’ sorcery, not social realism, ejit; 2) look up Bronze Age war chariots.

Lady Cona is nominally set in the same world as my The Making of This World Ruined series, which is itself in some complex way set in the same world as Empires of Dust and A Woman of the Sword only thousands of years in the past or the future or all in Marith or Lidae’s head. You might notice some self-snark references. There are certainly a few easter eggs. You might even find a tiny hint at the secret new project I’m planning to write after The Making of This World Ruined.

Anna Smith Spark