Now, Back to the Grind

The dust has settled, and the excitement from the publication and the small flurry of sales has died down.  I got away from it all this weekend by putting my scuba instructor hat on and running Open water checkouts for a great group of kids.  Also in my class was a nice man with early onset Alzheimer's, who is trying to check off his bucket list items before the disease progresses.  Gratifying and bittersweet, there.

Happy Monday.  It's back to the mortgage-paying job.  On the list today: polishing up my next short story for publication, "O'Reilly's Sacrifice," a baseball fantasy about a rabid Red Sox fan who decides to make the ultimate sacrifice in an attempt to lift the "Curse of the Bambino" from the team in 2004.  (It worked, by the way; the Sox won the Series that year.) I sent my thoughts on the cover to my wonderful cover artist, Jerry Branch, last week, and I'm anxious and excited to see what he comes up with.

And of course, back to the grind on the novel, now up to 72,000 words, with the sinking suspicion that we're just past the halfway mark.  The planned trilogy, at this rate, may push a half-million words.