Time & Perspective Quote by Lynn Abbey

Nostalgia, here, isn’t a sentimental mood; it’s a professional wager. Lynn Abbey frames her return to “old-fashioned sword and sorcery” as both homecoming and risk, and she does it with a deceptively casual line: “I’m hoping it’s like riding a bicycle.” That idiom is doing double duty. On the surface, it’s craft talk - the familiar assurance that once you learn a skill, the muscles remember. Underneath, it’s a quiet admission that genre work isn’t just technique; it’s tempo, voice, and a particular kind of imaginative confidence that can rust if you’ve been writing elsewhere.

“Old-fashioned” is the tell. Abbey isn’t merely revisiting a setting of blades and magic; she’s invoking a mode with strong, sometimes contested expectations: clear moral stakes, kinetic plotting, archetypal heroes, a certain pulp-forward pleasure. Calling it “old-fashioned” acknowledges the cultural baggage - the way sword-and-sorcery can read as retro, even politically or aesthetically dated, in an era trained on grimdark realism and prestige-fantasy sprawl. She signals awareness without apology, positioning the return as deliberate rather than out of touch.

The hope is the point. “Hoping” tempers authorial authority with human vulnerability, inviting readers to root for the attempt. It’s also a subtle promise: if she pulls it off, the result won’t be a museum piece. It’ll be motion - balanced, practiced, fast - the kind of story that remembers how to move.