First, I worked all weekend to create a new website (this one!). Simple and clean with a breathtaking splash that changes as you surf. The focus, as always, will be the content. Molly Fyde, especially. All posts from the old blog will get moved over, and I’ll probably run both concurrently. If you prefer the look of the other site and the Blogger network, you can go there to read. This site will be a general locus for everything I’m working on, not just the Molly books.

The second announcement is almost too crazy to mention. I hesitate to, it’s so outlandish. I’m going on vacation one week from today. With the Bern Seer.

Yeah. I have a funny feeling we aren’t popping down to Mexico for a week of Margaritas and Salsa-dancing. The message came up on The Reader two weeks ago, telling me to be ready to set aside all work for a week and to go someplace “Out of this world.”

Do I not sound excited enough? I have to admit, I’m a bit more nervous and skeptical than anything else. I feel like camera crews are going to capture this all on film and tell me I’ve been on some weird reality-TV show. Or the thin, lovely old lady who gave me The Reader is going to take me back to an apartment full of cats and show me walls of fiction, piles of loose papers, and bookshelves of journals. All of this is just mad scribblings over so many years of “flights of fancy” that she now has frequent flier miles that’ll get us to Mars and back.

Maybe I’m dealing with a rogue genius, a crazy savant, who doesn’t know how to organize this material into something readable. Something that can be understood. Or, perhaps she believes this nonsense. Maybe she has some sort of dissociative personality disorder. I’ve been so committed to this project, but soon I might need to commit its founder.

I haven’t had doubts like these since the first and only time we met. That was also the last time my wife and I had this sort of fight… rose our voices with one another.

If I don’t sound too enthused, or nervous with the prospect of leaving the planet for a week, part of it is ’cause I’m scared I won’t. I’m more terrified to find out I’ve spent six months of my life doing nothing.