The Academie Duello store carries a wide variety of items: books, toys, swords, armour, and sports equipment, with a number of different suppliers for each. In this post, we'll look at one of our book publishers: Freelance Academy Press. From their website:
Freelance Academy Press brings readers innovative books and rich supporting material in the field of Western martial arts, American and European history, arms and armour, chivalry, historical arts and crafts, and related adult and young adult fiction. We do this through new educational books and carefully selected, timeless reprints.
Freelance Academy Press was started by a number of prominent names in the WMA community that should be familiar to those of you who attended the Vancouver International Swordplay Symposium back in February, including Greg Mele, Christian Tobler, and Tom Leoni. These three (along with Adam Velez, the production and design manager) have repeatedly proven themselves as publishers of the highest quality over the past few years, putting out books on many of the sources and styles that form the core of the Academie Duello system: for longsword, there is Fiore dei Liberi's Armizare, for sidesword The Complete Renaissance Swordsman, and for rapier both Venetian Rapier as well as the forthcoming Art and Practice of Fencing.
In addition to writeups on all of the Freelance books, DVDs and posters (which are available in the Academie Duell store), their website also has a number of free supplementary articles for a number of their books, as well as a few titles that are available exclusively as downloads. You should also check out the Freelancer, a blog maintained by the Freelance team that keeps you abreast of everything from upcoming releases to poetry to martial arts insights.
Devon Boorman is the Co-Founder and Director of Academie Duello Centre for Swordplay, which has been active in Vancouver, Canada since 2004. Devon’s expertise centres on the Italian swordplay tradition including the arts of the Renaissance Italian rapier, sidesword, and longsword, as well as knife and unarmed techniques. Read more from Devon Boorman.