It’s late Sunday morning, and I’ve just finished what I expect will be the last session at A & W, at least for this novel. Starting in late 2006 and ending in May of 2007, I composed the first draft of the manuscript (then called Meadowork) by typing for a few hours every weekday morning at the Dubs. The coffee and toast were good and cheap and the background music was oldies. It all fit the project - work at it like job, with daily targets (500 upped to 1,000 words a day) and with weekends and holidays off. People laughed (who can blame them) but it worked. When my excel spreadsheet showed 100,000 words, I was done. Originally that was to be that, just another item ticked off from my retirement To Do list. But after a few rounds of editing, I gave the draft to a friend of mine, Liz Barron, to review for accuracy and sensitivity concerning one of the characters. And...she liked i! And...she gave it to her friend, Ray Blumenfeld. And...he liked it! But the rest is a story for another day. Now, I will be leaving the Dubs and going home to finish reviewing the last hundred pages of the galleys we just got back from the printer. As Ray e-mailed me yesterday - “OMG its really happening!”