Now working on SHARING THE 30th FLOOR WITH ELVIS. We open the Crown Room at the International Hotel (now the Hilton of course) at about the same time Elvis opens at the main room in Las Vegas. The other half of the 30th floor room that we play in is the Imperial Suite, now better known as the ‘Elvis’ suite. Seventeen bedrooms and a magnificent view of the eastern desert.

Now through THE FINAL DOLL and STEMS AND SEEDS. These are all working titles for Chapters of course but naming chapters is really fun. Working on TRYING TO GET IT RIGHT. The final chapters are in sight. Nose to the grindstone to finish vomit draft.

Just finished the chapter titled THE CAT, THE COS, AND THE FAMILY STONE.

When the 30th of March rolls around the pages will be going to a new format. My Welcome page will go to hell I reckon. This will hopefully be my new banner for that page. There’s a weird little spot on the bottom left to leave room for where the profile picture goes. It’s kind of a crazy montage, sort of “Dr. Pepperish”, even. But there’s a lot of stuff that’s meaningful in the picture. This is another one of those ongoing little projects.

Trying out a new cover page. These cover pages are all experiments. Being visually stimulated, catching the vision of something, is an important help to me in the creative process. So having a cover, even one that is temporary helps me visualize the final product. Even though I have some ideas about it, this is another one of those places where you get outside help. When you’re doing a first book I can’t think of anything thing more important (except the book itself) than the impression the cover and the blurbs on it. As a big reader myself I’m going to have to be captured by the cover enough to turn it over and look at the excerpts on the back and to then take a look at the first few pages. If you have an opinion, please share it with me. My older cover is in the photo section. I’m afraid it’s just too busy.

Completely appreciate the way the Likes have grown on this page. Especially since I still have about 25% of my first draft to go. I’m currently re-visiting Hawaii, which for a lot of reasons was an exceptional time and place for me. By the time we left about half of us had ‘rock’ fever and were anxious to get back to southern California. While I missed much about California I was getting the feeling that if I stayed there much longer I would have been just as happy with a little shack on the beach ….