No, not a cattle roundup. A roundup of news and what’s been going on and keeping me busy lately.

At the risk of no one reading past the first news, I am going to start with the goings on regarding Nowhere Wild. Obviously, there was the big news from Friday night of getting the first copies of the ARC. That was a pretty thrilling night. I let Lisa open the package. Just seemed like the right thing to do, since she was the one who told me to start writing again all those years ago.

There’s been lots of other book related things going on, from proofs that I’ve reviewed, and reviews of proofs that I’ve reviewed (seriously). I’ve also begun prepping for the marketing blitz planned for the launch. I’ve got a couple of blog entries and a short story for other sites already written, and have been trying to make sure retailers have the correct information for the book, and have been registering in their various author programs (more on that in the near future). I’ve also been prepping for the launch party. I visited the University Bookstore in Seattle over the weekend to check out the venue. More details on that to come as we get closer to the launch date as well.

On the work side, life has been extremely busy. A phase on a project I’ve been working on will be wrapping up soon, and for a while it was consuming every spare moment I had, including some I didn’t. I’m a morning person, not a night owl, and there were more than a few days of working past nine at night… sometimes as late as eleven. Anyone who knows me, knows my brain completely shuts down at 9:36 PM. Coding any later than that is usually a recipe for disaster. But somehow the work had to get done, and it did.

At home, things have been equally hectic. My daughter Lorelai has been taking piano lessons, and just finished her first performance of “Ode to Joy” for her school class. Lisa and I are very proud at how hard she worked at it.

My son just finished up his third season of baseball, and did very well. He still has plans to play professionally after college. That’s not a bad goal for an eight year old, and judging by the way the Mariners have been hitting this year, something that is looking all the more likely by the day.

I’ve started riding bikes again… riding my road bike around the neighborhood, and taking my son mountain biking at a local bike park. My daughter tried it once, but she wasn’t quite up to it. She’s usually the fearless one, but one steep descent turned her off. Hopefully she’ll give it another try. Reece and I have a ton of fun every time we go (when my bike doesn’t break down… FYI, it’s really hard to ride with a busted seat.)

Between work, and baseball, and piano, we haven’t had a lot of spare time, but when we do have spare time, I can now sit outside on our patio and write. It gets a little warm there by about 5 PM, but it’s absolutely perfect earlier in the day. A little music and a laptop, and away I go.

And yes, I have been writing again. I’ve got two books on the go right now. That’s a little unusual for me, but I started on one, and then this other one jumped into my head one night. I wrote down the outline and immediately churned out the first chapter. We’ll see where it goes, but it seems to have legs.

Just 70 days left until Nowhere Wild launches, and my summer is already absolutely packed, It’s times like this that I miss my old train commute into Seattle. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t miss the 3 hours a day in transit, but I do miss the guaranteed writing time each day. Somehow I have to wriggle it back into my schedule, or neither of these two books will get done this year.

Oh yeah, here’s tonight’s sunset. It get’s pretty easy to take them for granted around here, but man are they amazing.