A repeat heads-up for SWASH 2011 [External Link] and a little about writing.
Exactly as I said last week: I shall be at SWASH 2011 [External Link] at Leeds Royal Armouries on the weekend February 19th & 20th. More precisely, I shall be stooging (being an instructor’s sidekick and whipping boy) for the “Small Sword dis-arms” session on the Saturday, the instructor being Simon McGrory from the Sheffield SSS [External Link]. Entrance to the sessions and talks at SWASH is charged but members of the public will actually be able to observe the training sessions. If you’re at all interested in taking up fencing, sport or historical, or any other western martial art for that matter, it’s well worth a look.
It shouldn’t affect the website update next weekend.
In 25 Ways To Kill A Werewolf news (world info on the Alex Jones’ page), I am down to the last five werewolves to kill. So I continue with the “Almost there! Woot!”. I might even get the first draft finished for the end of February. And the way I’ve been writing it means a lot of the niggles that usually get worked on in the second draft have already been sorted. But there are still plenty of spelling mistakes and plot-holes to fill, I’m sure, so I’m not promising I can get everything done for the end of March and the end of the Angry Robot Books’ [External Link] open submissions. On the other hand, they only ask for the first 5 chapters and standard synopsis-type materials, so I should be able to get that up to final draft standard. Once the story arc is nailed down, it’s just tweaking. (You do realise this is all bravado, right?)
Okay, I’m off to go cheer for Ireland against France to complete my rugby weekend. The summary so far for this weekend: Bad luck Italy, stonkingly well done England (and I managed not to boo and hiss, and everything!); Bad luck Scotland, yay the boys in red!
And, yes, I didn’t mention it last weekend because I was still sulking about the Wales-England opener. Yes, sulking. Now stop reminding me about it or I’ll sulk some more.