Ahoy, reader! And ahoy, springtime!  Sorry for the pirate talk. I just started reading Treasure Island for some reason, and the lingo’s still swimming in my head. Anyway how the hell’ve you been? It’s been a stressful and commanding early spring for me, but the end of the tunnel is in sight. Can you believe it’s two months from today that Jeanette and I get married? I sure can’t. I couldn’t be more excited, though, reader. We’ve got some big plans for this party. The off-the-hookedness will be so dramatic, we’re bound to see at least a few jaws drop. And though the stress of wedding planning occasionally leads to some tense moments, I’m surer now than ever before that I’m one of those lucky, lucky few who’s managed to find and tie the knot with the overwhelming love of his life. What a girl I’ve got, reader. What a blindingly wonderful girl.

So you might be wondering by now why in the world I’m actually posting to this site on a random Monday afternoon. I say to you, reader, that it’s not so very random. Well okay, yeah, it’s random. But at least this particular Monday is connected to the week of an important date in my little life. This very week, dear reader — Thursday, in fact — marks the one-year anniversary of the day I first departed Florida City along the long road home. One year! This particular chunk of time has been a strange one for me, in that the day I first began the walk simultaneously seems like yesterday and forty-five years ago. This has to have been one of the most eventful years of my life. More eventful, maybe, than the entire decade that came before it. To cram so much busyness and goodness into such a small window, well shit, that’s how 365 days can feel like a blink of an eye and a generational epoch in one instance. But here now, reader, it’s almost here. The anniversary of my departure.

You might have noticed that the title of this post indicates anniversary-related plans. Good eye (as ever), reader. I do indeed have plans for this Thursday. And here they are: This Thursday, I will post the new and (theoretically) improved Chapter 1 of my manuscript. Then, for nine Thursdays thereafter, I will post an additional new and (theoretically) improved chapter of my manuscript. That’s ten chapters in all. I know, I know. “A chapter a week.” You’ve heard this one before. Only difference is that this time around, I’m actually finished with the first ten chapters, and so there won’t be anything to deter me from posting. That’s more than 150 pages in all, dear reader. And it represents the entirety of Book 1 (which I’m calling — you’ll never see this one coming — “What We’ve Got.”). You might feel like you’ve read many of these chapters before. True. You have read four of them. But you haven’t read them in their new and (theoretically) improved states. I think you’ll find that, whether you believe them to be improved or not, each chapter will at least be dramatically different from the versions you’ve read in the past. That’s what I’ve been doing all winter and spring, you see: making broad-sweeping changes to these first ten chapters.

In any case, if you’re one of the twelve people who still checks in to this humble site on a daily basis, first I want to thank you, and second I want to promise weekly reading material from this Thursday until the Thursday before our wedding (see the serendipity there?). And even if that reading material turns out to suck, at least you’ll have something to pass the time on that greatest of swing days, Thursday. Thanks for hanging in there, reader. I hope you’ll like what you read.