I feel like I’m playing a game of black jack.

I’ve got a good set of cards.

Problem is, anytime I start thinking I’m lucky – I lose that streak. Funny thing, that. Auto-humble.

But that’s okay. Whatever I want, I’m going to work hard for it. And when it starts working out, I’m not just going to cruise. I’m going to bust my ass even more.

The writing is going well. I never liked writing on paper because I hated the lag time. Typing seemed a hell of a lot faster. But when I wrote Tides I was sitting exhausted on a plane back from Jamaica. It hit me like the wall of a skating rink. I borrowed a pen from the steward and set to work. My deadline was the flight landing. I knew if I had a break, I’d lose what was coming. When I type, I stop myself – I’m constantly pausing to think too damn much. To make the sentence perfect the first time, so I never had to edit.

But something about putting pen to paper makes you honest with your skill level. The most famous books, ones that will be classics for all time, were done this way. It was quill and paper. It was blood and prison walls.

Maybe this first story ain’t perfect, but that’s not what I’m aiming for. A piece can be like a child to me. It can get colicy and cough in your face. Other times it backfires when the kid has his hands in his pants in a grocery store.

But sometimes, just sometimes. It’s something different all together, and whatever it is crawls inside you and stretches your bones until you’re an whole inch taller. Closer to whatever it is that writers reach for. Closer to changing the lives you love, to strangers, and spreading like wildfire towards the next generation. It’s not immortality. It’s about waking up the mortals to pictures of all sizes.

I have more than enough acacia wood to make frames for whatever I dream of. Whatever I create. That tree of life is alight and I’ll let it illuminate my way for as long as it wills me to.

Because I won’t be a rose bud anymore.