Promo for The City and the Sword

 A promotional image for Stephen Brooke's upcoming fantasy novel, The City and the Sword.

The City and the Sword Release Date

The official release date for Stephen Brooke's new fantasy novel, THE CITY AND THE SWORD is August 23,  2024, which gets it out there before the Labor Day weekend. Admittedly, official releases don't mean as much in these days of ebooks and print-on-demand. Here's the rear cover blurb:

Famod had fallen. Young Lellie and fellow orphan Nib had barely escaped the sack of the port and its attendant horrors. Where could they reach sanctuary and a new life? Across the hills in Tesra, City of Wizardry, seemed the only choice.

There, under the tutelage of Zil, merchant and spy, Lellie finds a purpose she had not known, learning the ways of the sword and much more—all while discovering her own self as she becomes a young woman.

More info will be upcoming. As ever, the book will be available as print paperback and free ebooks (EPUB and PDF).

 

Stempel Garamond

Stempel Garamond was first issued by the Stempel foundry almost a hundred years ago as Garamond-Antiqua. It was—and remains—one of the more faithful and attractive revivals of the Garamond typefaces. There have been a number of versions since, clones, reissues, digitalizations. One of the better known would be the free URW++ Garmond No.8, which may be found readily online. It is ‘almost’ an open license font; a publisher needn’t worry about using it for print or embedding it in a PDF. I see it pretty much as a publisher’s starting kit, dependable and usable for pretty much any project.

Incidentally, its italics are based on ones actually designed by Claude Garamond, where many other Garamond typefaces use italics by Robert Granjon, a respected successor of Garamond.

The Garamond Original typeface—a name used by both Bitstream and SoftMaker—is essentially a clone of Stempel. As with Garamond No.8, they lack opentype features for those who want or need them, though SoftMaker does offer separate small caps. That makes up for much. The typeface is included in SoftMaker’s MegaFont collection, which remains a rather good deal.

Not surprisingly, various opentype projects based on Garamond No.8 have popped up over the last couple decades but none have seemed to go much of anywhere. Be that as it may, the versions that are available are quite viable alternatives to commercial Garamonds or the popular EB Garamond and other open license Garamond (or Garamond-like) fonts. Stempel Garamond, under whatever name, is a good choice for anyone producing books.

We have used versions in all Stephen Brooke’s fantasy novels set among the Mora (the Malvern Trilogy, the Mora Trilogy, etc). We are entirely likely to use Stempel again in books to come. Indeed, we consider it our default for novels.