DeKALB | When it comes to impressing older women, we’ve all had some misguided attempts. I’ll be the first to admit to growing a wiry black mustache after being told that facial hair was a sign of virility.

But whereas most men will reluctantly confess to feats of hair gel or weight training, few can brag about writing an anachronistic fantasy/hardboiled detective mystery to get the girl.

Except, that is, for Alex Bledsoe, author of The Sword-Edged Blonde, who spoke Wednesday at DeKalb Public Library’s speculative fiction group, Destination Wonder.

As a senior in high school, Bledsoe joined a family living class to meet girls, but instead became infatuated with the teacher, Miss Tisk. His first rough draft of The Sword-Edged Blonde was written in hopes of winning her affections

“Miss Tisk taught [high school family living] and she was right out of college so she was only about five years older than us,” said Bledsoe. “I had the biggest crush on her and I did what geeks have done since time immemorial; I tried to impress her by writing. Unfortunately, I never worked up the nerve to show it to her, but that was the first version of that story.”

The Sword-Edged Blonde, which was published in hardcover in 2007 and paperback in 2008, is the first of three novels by Bledsoe that follow Eddie LaCrosse, a “private sword jockey with a talent for digression.” LaCrosse is a Tolkien-esque private eye, speaking with a sarcastic charm about princesses and wizards. Written in first person, it reads like the monologue of those foggy gumshoe flicks. You can almost hear a whining trumpet as he negotiates his pay in gold pieces.

“[The Sword-Edged Blonde] is a high-fantasy sword and sorcery story written as if it were a detective novel, so it’s first person, has sarcastic dialogue, and things like that,” Bledsoe said. “The characters have normal names but they use magic, and there’s sword fighting and there’s castles.”

Bledsoe is also the author of two vampire novels that take place in Memphis in the ‘70s; Blood Groove and The Girls with Games of Blood; and an upcoming rural fantasy about a race descended from faeries living in pre-colonial East Tennessee, the Hum and the Shiver.

“[Fantasy] is just one of [the] things I’ve always been interested in, and oddly enough it’s not something I read a lot of anymore,” Bledsoe said. “I read a lot of it when I was in high school, but my tastes now run more towards Robert B. Parker, and people like that. There’s just something primevally interesting to me about a guy pulling out a sword and going off to do battle with evil.”