Yes, I’m still writing. It’s not easy for me, though why that may be so is a topic for another day. 

For now I’m going to kind of ease back in by posting walk-throughs of airbrush projects I’ve done in the last few years. I realize that seems like quite the non sequitur; I’m asking your indulgence as I take baby steps here.

I started taking Batto-Jutsu, a samurai sword art, just before the pandemic, and earned my shodan this year. This would put nearly 50 years between my black belt in Tae Kwon Do and the new one, which I find sorta funny and sorta cool.

Katana have been a big deal in my novels Ariel and Elegy Beach, and I’ve owned a few cheap iaito (dull practice swords), and trained with them (unsupervised and wholly ignorantly).  Once I started Batto, I found I really wanted to learn more about the swords themselves: Take them apart, clean them, repair them, maintain them–and customize them.

That entailed tons of tutorials helping me learn cleaning, assembly, rattle-can painting, handle-wrapping (tsukamaki), airbrushing, and a host of related skills. Thank god for Youtube.

So I think I’m just gonna post walk-throughs of some of these projects for a while. Partly because this is a new endeavor for me even while it’s part of a lifelong undertaking in martial arts that I haven’t talked about much. And partly, as I said above, it’s to help get me get used to doing all this again.

So I beg you be gentle as I get my sea legs back.