Sweet Victory

Thank you to the two commenters who congratulated me on the start of this exercise thing. I appreciate your kind words muchly. First up, an update on the exercise itself. Second up, an update on how I'm using the Internet to help me. As the summer has drawn to an end, I've backed off on my swimming, but am still running 3-4 days per week. My weekly mileage is now up over 20 miles and my longest run - last night - was a hair under eight miles at a 9:00/pace. To think that I only got off the couch eight weeks ago and am up to that kind of mileage is kind of cool. Again, I think the main reason this time has been successful is because I'm only doing workouts every other day. The rest day seems to be doing a lot to keep the knees, shins, etc.... healthy. Last weekend, I ran my first race in nearly 15 years! It was only a 5k, and my eager beaver first mile resulted in a less than stunning 26:14, but the good news I came in 150th out of 305 - just ahead of the bubble, so all in

Here's a don't-miss anthology: Rebellion: New Voices of Fiction , features twelve of the best new writers out there, including me. Most of the writing in the anthology I'd call lit.fic. bordering on contemporary fiction with maybe a little noir in some cases. Want a taste of the book before slapping down twelve measly bucks? Here's a bit of my story for your review . So do it: be a rebel!

A great surprise showed up on my door-step yesterday: my own autographed copy of Secret Confessions of the Applewood PTA , by Ellen Meister . You'll find my name in the Acknowledgments section of the book (woo-hoo!), assuming you're the type of person who reads the Acknowledgments. Ellen and I traded ms edits a few years back. Obviously I'm a better much better editor than Ellen because her book got mentioned on Leno last week and my book is... is.... frankly, I'm not even sure where you'd find a copy of it these days. Certainly not in stores. Perhaps on the hard-drive of the computer I wrote it on, which I believe is at a landfill near you! But if you like chick-lit or mommy-lit or minivan-lit or whatever else they call it these days, buy a copy. You won't be disappointed.

What's with the radio silence on the blog, you ask? Well, a couple reasons: 1.) Summer, in general: Internet traffic dips in the summer. Since this blog tends to be the best info. I've found online, there's less of it to find. 2.) Summer, in specific: Last week was a glorious week at the beach. I came back feeling tanned, rested and ready - uh, until I opened up the 400 e-mails I hadn't gotten to. 3.) There's a new love in my life. Yes, believe it or not, I'm back on the exercise wagon. Here's the least you need to know about that: I was a long distance runner in high school and college. I wasn't great, but I was one of the best ones to finish after the great ones did. No, I wasn't the worst of the best, but I was one of the best of the ok crowd. Then, mid-way through a training run in college, four miles from the campus, I stopped running and walked home. Four years before Forrest Gump did the same thing, mind you. In the fifteen years since then, I