Dawning

Here we are, a week into 2006, and what is different?  Well, DAWN ENCOUNTER, book #2 of my Masters at Arms series, is now on the stands.  It’s been so long since I submitted this book to my editor--June 1, 2004--and the information for it has been on my web site home page with the flash book video for such ages, that it seemed this time would never come.  But it’s been on the shelves for over a week now, and reviews and reader comments have been positive—which is always a relief!  In the meantime, ROGUE’S SALUTE (working title so subject to change) book #3 of the series featuring Italian sword master, Nicholas Pasquale, as the hero, is on my editor’s desk with a publication date of January 2007.  And I’m at work on book #4 which I’m calling GUARDED HEART, though, again, that’s subject to change.  This one is about Gavin Blackford, an English swordsman introduced in DAWN ENCOUNTER.  I’m also planning a research trip for book #5, which means going down to New Orleans and photocopying masses of pages from the newspapers of 1846 at the Williams Research Center.  (I’ll let you in on a secret here—the hero for this book will be a Kentuckian who was introduced in ROGUE’S SALUTE.)  It should be interesting to see the grand old city again, find out what has changed and what has remained the same.  Other than that, I’m writing, writing toward another June 1 deadline—but also working on a workshop to be given in Baton Rouge at the end of the month, getting my garden ready for spring, packing to attend a local quilting retreat and planning a summer trip to Ireland with my daughters and a sojourn in the Colorado mountains later in the year.  If the way a person begins a year in an indication of how it will go for the rest of it, then mine should be busy, productive and fun.  Hope everyone one else’s is the same.