As soon as I got home, we dove into several rehearsals per week, culminating in a fantastic premiere weekend of family, friends and hundreds of strangers who came out to see it. We had four sold-out houses, and lots of laughter, as the cast rose to the occasion and delivered sterling performances. My thanks to director Teresa Biber LoMonte and set designer Tom Andrew, who, once he started making Styrofoam meat, couldn’t stop.

At the final performance on the Sunday, they called me up on stage and gave me the play poster signed by all the actors, Teresa, and our wonderful stage manager, Anna Maria Leon.

As soon as I hit ‘send’ on the Blowback manuscript, I started proofreading the page proofs of Sandblast. It was a joy to see the book in print, formatted in paperback size, centered on 8x11 sheets of paper. Working at the same time as a professional proofreader, I marked it up in red pen (Old School), then scanned and emailed the corrections (New School) to the publisher.

So, by the time we got through the play weekend, November 22-24, I was ready for a break. Thanksgiving in the Florida Keys was lovely and relaxing, and we declared it a turkey-free zone.

Friends, when I say ‘Crazy November,’ I ain’t kidding. I was juggling three writing projects, plus prep for dozens of visitors and a Thanksgiving trip.

The craziness actually started in late October with the Florida Writers Conference in Orlando. I’m thrilled to report that my play, Murder at the Butcher’s, won the Dahris Clair Memorial Award for Best Play of the year! It was a fun and interesting conference, with lots of old(ish) and new writer friends and interesting seminars. The awards banquet was a blast! And my award is a mini-Oscar look-alike.

For the first part of November, I was on a self-imposed deadline for Blowback, the sequel to Sandblast. I sent it out to a dozen beta-readers by the 10th, a few days later than hoped. Luckily, I’m a very forgiving boss. The beta-readers are friends with particular expertise related to the book, particularly military members and journalists. Their critiques will inform my final revisions in time for the publisher’s January 15 deadline. That one, I will not miss!

Back home now, there’s no shortage of things to do. Book Three isn’t due until January 15, 2021, but the sooner I figure out what I’m doing, the more time I’ll have to write it. More on that, including the title, in my next newsletter. We’re also starting to work on publicity for the Sandblast launch March 31. The official event will be here in Delray Beach, but I plan to visit the Northeast in April for some book talks, and I hope to see many of you there.

Meanwhile, I’m watching for the mail carrier every day because the advance copies of Sandblast should be here this week. These will look almost exactly like the final book, but pre-proofreading. These are for reviewers, bloggers, journalists, book buyers, etc. We could start to see some reviews soon after New Year’s. A bit of nail-biting time for me!

So, more excitement ahead. Thanks for subscribing and stay tuned.

Happy Holidays!

Al