David Kudler's Blog

Guess what, amazing readers? We have INCREDIBLE news to share!

Bright Eyes: A Kunoichi Tale just won the Silver Medal in the Best Children’s/YA Audiobook category at the 37th IBPA Book Awards!

From Finalist to Medalist!

Remember when we celebrated being named a finalist? Well, now we’re celebrating even bigger! Out of nearly 1,800 entries from publishers across the entire country, our audiobook made it to the winner’s circle.

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The ceremony was held in St. Paul, Minnesota, and it was thrilling to be there in such incredible company.

What Makes This So Special

The IBPA Book Awards aren’t just any awards���they’re considered one of the highest national honors for independent publishers. These judges are serious book people: librarians, bookstore owners, professional reviewers, and industry experts who know quality when they hear it.

These are the Oscars and the SAG Awards of independent publishing.

Credit Where Credit Is Due

This silver medal belongs just as much to our incredible narrator Allison Hiroto as it does to the story itself. Her performance brings Risuko, Lady Chiyome, and all the samurai, spies, and shrine maidens to life in ways that still give me chills when I listen to it.

Award-winning narrator Allison Hiroto reads from Bright Eyes

If you haven’t experienced Allison’s narration yet, you’re seriously missing out. She doesn’t just read the story���she becomes it.

What This Means for Seasons of the Sword

Having Bright Eyes recognized at this level feels like validation for everything we’re trying to do with this series. We’re telling stories about:

A strong girl finding her place in a dangerous worldReal historical events through a fresh lensJapanese culture with respect and authenticityAdventures that matter, mysteries that grip you

And now we know we’re doing it right!

Thank You, Thank You, THANK YOU!

None of this would be possible without YOU���the readers, listeners, reviewers, and supporters who’ve made Risuko’s journey their own. Whether you discovered us through Book 1 (Risuko) or jumped in with Bright Eyes, you’re the reason stories like this get to exist.

Parents: Thank you for trusting us with your teens’ reading time. We know there are a million entertainment options out there, and choosing audiobooks that are both engaging AND meaningful isn’t always easy.

Teens: Thank you for giving historical fiction a chance, even when it’s set in a time and place very different from your own. Risuko’s story is timeless because growing up is timeless���no matter the century!

What’s Next?

Kano (Book 3) is already available in audiobook format (also narrated by the amazing Allison!), and I’m deep into finishing Murasaki, the final book in the series. Stay tuned for updates!

Want to celebrate with us? Here’s how:

Listen to the award-winning audiobook on Audible, Apple Books, or our websiteShare this news with fellow YA fansReview the audiobook if you’ve listened���it helps other readers discover Risuko’s world Follow us for updates on Book 4’s release

Have you listened to Bright Eyes yet? What was your favorite scene? Drop a comment below���I love hearing from readers!

BRIGHT EYES: A KUNOICHI TALE (Seasons of the Sword #2) by David Kudler, narrated by Allison Hiroto �����IBPA AWARD WINNER!

Major news from the world of young adult historical fiction! The prestigious IBPA Awards just named the audiobook of Bright Eyes: A Kunoichi Tale as a finalist for 2025!

The Story That’s Captivating Listeners

Two armies converge on the Full Moon, the secret school for kunoichi.

Spies. Bodyguards. Assassins.

Now it’s up to Risuko���whose nickname “Squirrel” comes from her love of climbing���to solve this dangerous mystery before it’s too late. She’ll face warlords, samurai, a monster lurking in the hills, and a hidden spy among those she trusts.

The stakes? Just the future of all Japan. No pressure, right?

As this thrilling sequel to Risuko: A Kunoichi Tale unfolds, listeners are left wondering: Will Risuko’s investigation bring peace… or trigger even more bloodshed?

Award-Worthy Narration

Multiple-award-winning SAG-AFTRA performer Allison Hiroto crafted the incredible narration that caught the IBPA judges’ attention. Hiroto brings each character to vivid life, from the determined Risuko to the samurai and warlords to cooks and shrine maidens (secretly training to be assassins!).

She has also recorded the audiobook for Kano, book 3 of Seasons of the Sword.

Bright Eyes Narrator Allison Hiroto

Hiroto’s masterful storytelling will transport you to war-torn sixteenth-century Japan from the safety of your own room, car, or bus.

What’s the IBPA Award?

For those who don’t know, the Independent Book Publishers Association Awards are among the most respected honors in independent publishing.

The IBPA Book Awards (formerly the IBPA Benjamin Franklin Awards) have been recognizing excellence in publishing since 1985.

Being named a finalist puts Bright Eyes in an elite category of outstanding titles from across the country.

Gold and silver medal winners for this year’s awards will be announced at the 37th annual IBPA Award Ceremony and Dinner on May 16, 2025.

Perfect for Fans of…

Bright Eyes is the second in David Kudler’s Seasons of the Sword series of YA historical adventure novels.

This series hits all the right notes if you enjoy:

Strong female protagonists who use brains over brawnHistorical settings that feel authentic and immersiveMurder mysteries with high-stakes consequencesJapanese culture and martial artsComing-of-age stories where characters discover their true strengthSeasons of the Sword The seasons turn, but the battles never stop���

Though Japan has been devastated by a century of civil war, Risuko just wants to climb trees. Growing up far from the battlefields and court intrigues, the fatherless girl finds herself pulled into a plot that may reunite Japan ��� or may destroy it. Torn from her home and what is left of her family, Risuko finds new friends at a school that may not be what it seems.

Magical but historical, Seasons of the Sword follows Risuko along the dangerous path to discovering who she truly is.

Teen historical adventure fictionThis award-winning series will include four books ��� one for each of the seasons: Risuko ��(Winter) Bright Eyes ��(Spring)Kano��(Summer) Murasaki�� (Autumn ��� coming soon!)

David Kudler is an author, editor, publisher, and performer who lives just north of the Golden Gate Bridge. He is working to finish Murasaki, the finale of his Seasons of the Sword series of teen historical adventure novels.

Listen Now!

Ready to hear what all the excitement is about? You can download Bright Eyes: A Kunoichi Tale on:

Seasons of the Sword websiteAudibleApple BooksHave you listened to Bright Eyes already? Share your thoughts in the comments!Note:While the series includes themes of war and mystery, the content remains age-appropriate for teens while exploring important concepts like courage, identity, and critical thinking. The audiobook format makes historical fiction accessible even for reluctant readers!

I’ve talked about writing historical fiction — about trying to make it as exciting as fantasy, while keeping it as accurate as possible.

I also try to make my writing accessible, while giving a sense of how Japan in the late sixteenth century looked through the eyes of Risuko and her friends.

One of the choices that I made was to translate all of the place names. So T��t��mi no kuni becomes Serenity Province, Hamamatsu becomes Pineshore, Edo become Estuary, and so on.

Why did I do that?

Accessibility

Well, the first reason was to make the world of the books as clear as possible for non-Japanese readers.

Since many of the characters in the books were historical figures, I didn’t want to mess with their names, though many of them have meanings in Japanese. Calling Takeda-sama ���Lord Warfield��� would have been more confusing than helpful, it seemed to me, whether the reader had heard of the famous warlord or not. And if I was going to keep some of the personal names untranslated, I needed to keep all of them.

Also, having everyone who used my main character���s proper name Murasaki refer to her as ���Purple��� would have been weird. (I do sometimes translate her nickname Risuko when someone���s making a joke about her squirrel-like habits.)

That left the Japanese names of towns, provinces, and such. Since all but the second book, Bright Eyes, involve Risuko and her friends traveling across central Japan, there were already plenty of those. I decided that translating the place names made a lot of sense.

To someone not familiar with Japanese geography, language, or culture, it seems to me Worth Province is much more evocative than Kai no kuni.

Anti-Exoticism

The other major reason I translated the place names: they wouldn���t have seemed exotic to Risuko and the other characters.

And I wanted to save the exotic for the true foreigners in the books like the Portuguese boy Jolalo (Jo��o) and his Irish friend Eyogoshei (Aidh Og O���Shea).

The name Ky��to, the city from which the emperor ruled, means simply Main Capital. When the Tokugawa moved the government northeast to Edo (Estuary), they changed that city���s name to T��ky�� (Eastern Capital).

Mochizuki, the name of the place where I set Lady Chiyome���s school for kunoichi, translates as Full Moon. Mochizuki is a real village in the Japanese Alps ��� though Mochizuki Chiyome���s estate comes completely from my imagination. You���ll notice that I left her clan name untranslated.

Many of the place names were fairly straightforward descriptions. Mikawa no kuni��� Three Rivers Province ��� had three major rivers coursing through it. Hamamatsu (Pineshore) lies on the coast of Japan, and was surrounded by pine woods.

It���s easy, writing a story set in a country foreign to most of your readers, to indulge in the seeming strangeness of the names and customs, but to the people in the story, none of those things are strange.

Poetic License

I wasn���t always able to find a direct translation that worked.

T��t��mi translates directly as Eastern (T��) Serenity (T��mi). When I called it that in early drafts of Risuko, one of my beta readers looked at the map and asked in confusion, ���Then where���s Western Serenity?���

So for simplicity���s sake, plain Serenity it became.

In some cases, I couldn���t find a clear translation of the place name. It didn���t refer to a geographic feature (Pineshore, Estuary, etc). And the name didn���t translate directly from spoken Japanese ��� the translation was simply the name. The translation for Shinano no kuni, for example, is Shinano Province. And if I was going translate some place names, I needed to translate them all.

I was reduced to looking at the written form of the name.

Japanese proper nouns ��� personal and place names ��� are generally written not in phonetic hiragana or katakana characters, but in kanji ideograms, Chinese characters that may be pronounced in multiple ways and may carry multiple meanings.

Shinano, for example, was written with two kanji characters: ������

Well, translate that from Japanese and you get��� Shinano.

But translate the characters separately and you get Trust (���) Body (���).

Huh.

That didn���t say much to me.

So I went back to the ideograms��� original meanings in Chinese and found Dark (���) Letter (���). I thought that was a wonderfully evocative name for the war-torn province that was home to Lady Chiyome���s mysterious school for spies, bodyguards, and assassins.

Translating (loosely) from the kanji gave me names like Rising Tail, Old Wood, Picnic Lake, Mount Wisdom, and so forth.

World Building

I do my best as a writer to portray the world through which Risuko and her friends move as they would have seen it.

They live in a turbulent Japan nearly half a millennium in the past.

I don���t. Neither do my readers.

By making the everyday settings as ordinary as possible, I hope I���ve allowed the extraordinary events Risuko lives through ��� and makes happen ��� to shine out.

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Author David Kudler is excited to announce that he has entered into an option agreement with Little Idea Media to develop an episodic television show based on his young-adult historical novel Risuko: A Kunoichi Tale.

Maury Sterling (Homeland) and Alexis Boozer Sterling launched their production company Little Idea Media to create stories that challenge narrative, perspective, and tradition. They have produced the short film Blood and Water, the feature��My Dead Friend Zoe (winner of the 2024 SXSW Audience Award), and,�� most recently,��Baby Love.

Little Idea Media seeks to create and produce media that celebrates the challenges, triumphs, work, and stories of the every human.�� Our mission is to find common ground through curiosity, accuracy, compassion, and service, and to provide opportunities for voices that have not been heard, and voices that serve discourse and growth. By challenging our own biases, tendencies and habits, we hope find a more powerful and inclusive point of view and to constantly strive to experience and embody, a higher calling and expression.

Risuko is the first in the award-winning Seasons of the Sword series of historical novels.

Risuko: A Kunoichi Tale (Seasons of the Sword #1)Can One Girl Win A War?

Though Japan has been devastated by a century of civil war, Risuko just wants to climb trees. Growing up far from the battlefields and court intrigues, the fatherless girl finds herself pulled into a plot that may reunite Japan — or may destroy it. She is torn from her home and what is left of her family, but finds new friends at a school that may not be what it seems.

Someone ��� a student? a teacher? an outsider? ��� is playing the kitsune. The mischievous fox spirit is searching for��� something. What do they want? And what will they do to find it?

Magical but historical, Risuko follows her along the first dangerous steps to discovering who she truly is.

Historical adventure fiction appropriate for teen readers

Seasons of the Sword:

Risuko��(Winter)Bright Eyes��(Spring)Kano (Summer ��� coming March 1, 2024!)Autumn ��� coming soon!Order your copy here:$2.99 – $24.95Shop now

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BookLife has shared a glowing review of Kano: A Kunoichi Tale:

When Risuko, Emi, and Toumi���three daughters of disgraced samurai who are training to become spies and assassins��� are sent on a quest to avenge their fathers, they becomes embroiled in the fate of Japan.

Kudler���s writing displays an ease that only comes from talent combined with hard work in this third installment of his Seasons of the Sword series.

Readers will appreciate that the heroes of this story���navigating their journey of self-discovery and redemption���are girls.

Risuko comes to life as a girl forced to grow up because of harsh cultural norms and political strife. Her friendships with Emi and Toumi are genuine, and their teamwork is up-lifting.

 

Kano (Seasons of the Sword #3) Can one girl save a nation? With Japan’s future in the balance, Risuko may recover the Kano clan’s honor ��� or she may destroy it forever

Lord Takeda has sent Risuko, Emi, and Toumi on a mission to the capital. The road is dangerous. The destination is treacherous.�� Risuko ��� the girl who just likes to climb ��� must make a choice that will have repercussions not only for Risuko’s life and those of her friends, but possibly for all of Japan.

In this thrilling third book in the Seasons of the Sword, she encounters old friends, new enemies, and a strange boy from a far-off land called Portugal. Through raging battles and deadly court intrigue, Risuko must follow a path narrower and less stable than any pine branch. And the consequences should she fail are sharp and hard as rocks below.

The red-and-white disguise of the kunoichi awaits.

Is Risuko ready?READ A SNEAK PEAK: ���Tiptown���Seasons of the Sword:Risuko (Winter) Bright Eyes (Spring)Kano (Summer)Murasaki��(Autumn ��� coming soon!)(Young adult historical adventure; Japanese Civil War)Order Directly$3.99 – $22.95Shop now

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We are excited to announce the release of the  audiobook edition of Bright Eyes (Seasons of the Sword #2) by David Kudler! Read by award-winning narrator Allison Hiroto, the unabridged recording of the second Seasons of the Sword book is available at risuko.net and stillpointdigital.com, as well as on Audible (US, UK, Australia, and more!) and iTunes/Apple Books!

To help spread the word, we’ll share a download code with the first five readers who request it (Risuko.net, Audible US/UK only)

Allison Hiroto reads from Bright Eyes (Seasons of the Sword #2)

Meet The Narrator

Allison Hiroto��is an actor, musician,��and��voiceover artist with dozens of titles to her credit, including Haruki Murakami���s��1Q84, Ming Cho Lee���s��Pachinko,��and an all-star recording of Louisa May Alcott���s��Little Women.����Her voiceover work ranges from commercials to audiobooks, and she is thrilled to now be a part of the Seasons of the Sword series. �� Allison is an��AudioFile��Earphone Award winner and an Audie nominee in both��the adult and children���s fiction categories. ��As��an��actor, Allison is a member of La��MaMa���s��Great Jones Repertory Company,��Loco 7 Dance Puppet Theatre, Yara Arts Group, and NYU���s First Look Theatre��Company.�� She has performed all over the world including London, Taipei,��Toronto,��Bogota,��Zagreb, and��at��the Venice Biennale.�� Allison is a grant recipient of the��Lower Manhattan Cultural Council���s Creative Engagement award for her work co-curating the��Day of Remembrance��events honoring the 120,000 Japanese-Americans who were unjustly incarcerated during WWII.�� ��She is a member of SAG-AFTRA and Actors Equity. You can find more on her website:��www.allisonhiroto.com

She loves narrating audiobooks. ���What fun to put on a set of headphones and get lost in a good audiobook.���

Allison is currently hard at work recording Kano, the third book in Seasons of the Sword.

Order Yours Today

The Bright Eyes audiobook is now available on the Seasons of the Sword and Stillpoint Digital Press websites, as well as Audible and iTunes.

Bright Eyes (Seasons of the Sword 2) Can one girl stop a killer? The future of Japan hangs in the balance, and it’s up to a girl who likes to climb to save the day

Two armies have descended on the Full Moon, and the war that has torn Japan apart for over a century threatens to destroy Lady Chiyome’s school for young shrine maidens (and assassins).

In this thrilling sequel to��Risuko: A Kunoichi Tale,��Risuko must face warlords, samurai, angry cooks, a monster in the hills, the truth about her father, a spy among the��kunoichi…

And a murderer.

Someone kills a Takeda lieutenant, staging it to look like suicide. Can Risuko figure out who would do such thing?

And can she keep it from happening again?

Award-winning Narrator Allison Hiroto reads from “The Lesson”:https://risuko.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/z-Bright-Eyes-Sample.mp3READ A SNEAK PEAK: “The Cave”

Seasons of the Sword:

Risuko (Winter)Bright Eyes (Spring) Kano �� (Summer)Autumn ��� coming soon!

(Young adult historical adventure; Japanese Civil War)

Order Direct$3.99 – $22.95Shop now

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In reply to Murray Watnick.

Thank you, Murray, for your kind thoughts.

In reply to Brenda Marie Brown.

Hi Brenda, I am a fellow Brooklynite who knew Jackie when growing up and attending James Madison High School. I really got to know her when I had several telephone conversations with her recently before her passing. I recognized that she was a truly unique individual and it was a privilege to have known her. I will never forget her beautiful thoughts and the voice that spoke them. A rare experience to have known her. Murray Watnick

Dear David. We just found out today about your mom’s passing, and I remember you told Donal and me about her involvement in “Seasons of the Sword.” On those special occasions when I saw Jackie – a surprise bithday party, for example…I was struck by her intelligence, warmth, and gracious manner. I was so sorry that she suffered so much with ALS, but I know that you’ll remember her in your happiest times together. Our love and sympathy to you and the family, Brenda

If you’ve had a chance to read Kano, the most recent Seasons of the Sword book, you’ve seen the inscription, “To Ok��-san, my first and fiercest reader.”

My mother, Jackie Kudler, died last week. Losing parents is in the natural order of things, but her last year was a difficult one. She developed ALS (aka Lou Gehrig’s Disease), a truly awful ailment. My family will miss her terribly, but we are all relieved that her suffering is over.

Ok��-san was literally the person who taught me to read and write, to tell and appreciate stories. She was, besides being my mother, my middle school English teacher, and so was the first person to read my initial attempts at storytelling. A poet herself, she continued to be one of the first people I would share my writing with ��� including the Seasons of the Sword books ��� and her insight helped shape both my stories and my craft in telling them. Since she also worked as a writing teacher for nearly seventy years, helping students from pre-teens to adults learn to express themselves effectively, she provided the study guides and essay prompts for��Risuko and Bright Eyes.

She will be sorely missed, not just by her family but by all of the people whose lives she touched.

Here’s a picture of Mom and Dad ��� one of the last taken of them together:

Ok��-san and Ot��-san, c. 2006

And here’s the obituary we’ve been sharing:

Jacqueline Kudler (n��e��Schlakman) has died of complications of ALS at her home in Sausalito at the age of 89. Her only stipulation regarding this obituary was that it say ���died,��� not ���passed��� or other euphemism. That we use the proper word was important to her because she had spent seven decades as a writing teacher and poet.

A graduate of Brooklyn���s James Madison High School, Brooklyn College, and New York University, she started teaching in New York���s public schools. Her marriage in 1958 to Joel Kudler, a dentist then in the US Air Force, brought her to Japan and Wyoming before they settled in Sausalito, California, in 1961. She taught for many years at Sausalito���s North Bay School, which she helped to start, and for over thirty years through College of Marin���s Community Education Program.

An avid hiker her whole life, she and sister Arlene Stark co-wrote a series of articles on hiking Marin trails, published in��The Pacific Sun. A founding member of Sixteen Rivers Press, a Northern California poetry collective, she released two books of her poems,��Sacred Precinct��in 2004 and (following the death of her husband in 2006)��Easing into Dark��in 2012. She had just finished proofreading her third collection,��Ripenings, which the press will publish in September, 2024.

She is survived by her sister June Weiss, by her sons David and Michael, by her daughters-in-law Maura and Kathi, and by her grandchildren Sasha, Julia, Caden, and Kila.

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