Revisiting a Crash Site

Today at 4:40 I'll set sail by trail again, this time to Atlanta. And I'm in finer fettle than I was twenty months ago, when I set out for Buffalo after suffering a serious fall. No wheelchair required to get me to the train. No cane required to take even three steps.

Still, this pales beside the changes I've gone through since I left Atlanta nearly twenty years ago. Atlanta was my crash site in more ways than I care to recall: marital, emotional, spiritual, publishing, employment, financial, physical...

Though I lack the hubris to announce a perma-happy ending, I can tell you: things have changed, in most ways for the better. I moved to Seattle three years ago...I've published a dozen ebooks, three of them published in print editions by Hold Fast Press. Recently, I started working for a world-class company, with transfer potential after a year to anywhere I please. I'm happily at work on a new mystery series. And, oh yeah, I've lost fifty-plus pounds, thanks to going Vegan and returning to the gym.

So my spirits are high as I prepare to depart. In Atlanta I'll meet with two writers, Brad Strickland and Lev Butts...and, hopefully, one or two other old friends. On the train I'll get some reading done and put in more hours on my WIP..

And I'll pay my respects to that crash site that made way a phoenix rebirth.

Till then, I'll do the thing I love best in this world, next to writing: damn right, board another train.