Still pretty sore from a weekend of stage combat seminars, which I take every winter to freshen up my skills for the forthcoming spring renaissance faire season. I have a pretty heavy fight load for the spring show (more on that below) so I need to scrap the rust off so I’m ready to craft some quality fake violence.

WRITING PROJECTS

Well Behaved Women: After several weeks of slow-going, I’ve finally hashed out the plot issues and got back to serious work last week. The first draft is new creeping up on the 40,000 word mark, and once I finish book two I will be ready to plunge right into writing book three.

The Adventures of Strongarm & Lightfoot – book four: First draft in progress. Got a couple thousand words in last week, in-between thinking over WBW stuff.

Action Figures – Issue Seven: The Black End War: Edited and formatted, waiting on cover art — which is in progress! Tricia is playing around with Carrie’s new look a little, and this is one of the concepts she’s experimenting with.

Action Figures – Issue Eight: Crawling from the Wreckage: Third draft written.

Action Figures – Issue Nine: Rough plotting in progress.

Action Figures – Issue One: Secret Origins (audiobook): Review completed, final editing in progress.

APPEARANCES and EVENTS

• Saturday, February 17, 5 PM to 9 PM: Connecticut Renaissance Faire/Robin Hood’s Faire Meet the Directors Mixer. The producers of the Connecticut Renaissance Faire in Lebanon, CT and Robin Hood’s Faire, which has relocated this year to Lancaster, MA, are hosting a special promotional event at their Southbridge, MA headquarters to drum up interest in this year’s auditions for the two shows. If you’re interested, stop on by to meet with the directors — including me! I’ll be returning to the spring show as fight director.

MISC.

The end is nigh!

You have until the end of the day tomorrow to grab Action Figures – Issue One: Secret Origins along with 33 other titles for free as part of a superhero fiction cross-promotion.

You also have until tomorrow to submit a story for the New England Speculative Writers group’s open call for its first anthology. If you’re a New England-based writer, you’re eligible to submit a story. Go here to get the full details.

Finally, if you’d like to make sure you don’t miss any news from me, remember that I have a weekly newsletter that features some of the stuff you see posted here plus new, newsletter-exclusive material. Click this link to sign up.