Psst... I'm Back.

So, uh... yeeeaah.

It's been eight and a half months since I last updated poor, neglected 'According to e' -- consider me thoroughly ashamed. As many of you know, I've been working on a book during the majority of that time, and I finally turned in my manuscript a few weeks ago (the state of my desk -- aka "my kitchen table" -- on my deadline date is to the right. That was two weeks ago -- still doesn't look much different). The whole editing and marketing process remains ahead for me to tackle alongside my publisher (Wiley) in the months to come, but I do now feel like I'm slowly but surely starting to see glimmers of my old life returning.

Though I have a multi-thousand-word Lost finale post hanging over my head that I WILL eventually write, I'm more determined than ever to get back into the groove of posting here at least a few times a week. This site was always meant to be somewhat of a personal diary (isn't that what all blogs originally were supposed to be back in the day -- that day being some time in like 2005?), and since I know it's bound to be a wild ride for me between now and when my book is published in October, I really want to use 'According to e' to capture as much of that experience as possible. What's more, I have several readers who are aspiring authors and have asked about the process I went through in order to get a book deal, so my intention is to also travel back in time over the course of a few posts and explain the various steps I took to make it happen.

And then there's the fun stuff I'm itching to cover -- like the books I've somehow managed to read in the recent past, trips I've taken (including finally loading in more pictures from my '07 Antarctica, '08 Galapagos and '09 Turks & Caicos trips... Lord, has it really been THAT long?) and some of the silly things that have happened to me (or that I've done) since last October that I haven't had time to write about until now.

In order to not get too overwhelmed and give up on this endeavor before I really get going, I'm vowing to keep posts fairly short -- at least for the next few weeks or so -- so that I can just simply get back into the groove of writing something that doesn't have to do with where I used to work (the subject of my book), or movies (what I still write about twice a day every weekday for redbox's redblog), or Lost.

So I hope you'll stick with me! More very soon -- I promise. As in, before July 2010... just so we're clear.

- e