I've been holding off for months – literally, months – to roll out some announcements. The ink isn't on the paper yet, so I'm still trepidacious about talking, and don't really want to get anyone excited until there's a link on Amazon. 

But after the phone call I had on Friday, I will say this: in 2012, there will be at least four new David Blixt novels coming. 

That's right. 2012. 4 (FOUR!). New (NEW!). Books. 

I'm working on the final edits now, talking to the cover artist (can't use the below cover, alas!), and all the things that go into the final stages before publication.

More soon. Count on it.

Meanwhile, I've actually been spending less time as actor and fight director lately, and more playing the part of the author again. One of the high schools in the Chicago suburbs contacted me, as they use THE MASTER OF VERONA for a summer reading text for their AP History class. Would I be interested in coming and speaking for a day? I said absolutely, and went to have a truly lovely, if exhausting, day lecturing on Shakespeare, Romeo & Juliet, writing, Elizabethan theatre, and whatever else popped up. And it's always a good day when someone looks at you and says, "You know, I have a bag full of stage swords in my garage. Would they be any use to you?" Yes. Yes, they would. 

Appropriately, Romeo & Juliet is dominating my life again. I'm choreographing four different versions of the show at the moment, in four different cities. It's making me look at the text again, and also try desperately not to repeat myself. While there's a single story to tell, I want to tell it in as many ways possible. I have to say, the Steampunk version at the suburban high school may be may current favorite, if only for fighting with trashcan lids and crowbars as well as swords and knives. 

I'm spending a lot of time among the high schoolers at the moment, as this semester I'm teaching two classes on stage combat for the Chicago High School for the Arts. It's fun, it keeps me moving, and the students are great.

As for great students, Dash has started kindergarten, and Evie has moved up to three days a week in preschool. They're loving it beyond words. I have a son who not only likes school, but is good at math. And he's incredibly sweet. It's a dream, because he's so very much what I wish I had been at his age. Evie, on the other hand…is just as bright, just as funny, and a little more wild. Her mother keeps saying, "She's your child." Yes, yes she is.

For those who were worried (and there have been suprisingly many who've commented), yesterday I finally took the plunge and replaced my hookah. My new one is lovely, very compact, made in Romania, bought in Ann Arbor. I tried it that night, alone in my travels (I never light it when the kids are home, and since Dash was born the hookah has become a rare indulgance). But that first smoke transported me back to the hotel in Cairo fifteen years ago with Ian and Tabitha and Chrissy and the rest. Sense memory is a marvelous thing. 

Speaking of Ian, Jan and I had tea with him and his wife a few weeks back, and he pulled out a whole shoebox of photos of us in unlikely places – Masada, the pyramid at Giza, on the Acropolis, in Vienna (I had entirely forgotten Vienna, where I dragged him along for a trek to all of Walker Easterling's favorite places in SLEEPING IN FLAME). It was fun, and nice to see old friends doing well. 

Enough for the moment. There's much, much more to come. Including my take on the ANONYMOUS film, reviews of plays and books, music and movies, and, of course, news about the novels I've spent the last four years working on. 

Begin anticipation… now.