A bit of good news, finally: I seem to have finished my script for A Kidnapped Santa Claus. I say "seem" because I will undoubtedly fine tune it as I go.
This is the first time in my entire life I've scripted out an entire story from beginning to end, and I gotta say, I don't know how you people do it. It was an ordeal! Trying to create scenes, just picturing them in my head, only with a keyboard and no visual component was a real challenge. Ideally, we'll see this paying off with the drawing phase of the book going a lot faster (I hope so since my deadline is closer than I would like!) and hopefully it will all have been worth it. Of course, it's not like I had much choice in the matter since my normal way of working (one page at a time, letting the story take as long as it takes).
One change I made along the way was how I'm going to draw Santa Claus. Originally I was going to go with a very cartoony Santa, in a sort of Rankin-Bass style:



But lately I've been leaning towards doing him more like Thomas Nast, complete with cross hatching:



I wonder if I'd be allowed to show him smoking? 
Anyway, the plan is to start page one on Thursday. Wish me luck!