Cigar?

It's time to share.

Last Wednesday, I lit up a cigar.  I don't like cigars.  They taste nasty, they smell terrible but sometimes it just seems like the thing to do.  About ten years ago I wrote a magazine article on a whim and it sold.  The first place that would get the magazine in town was a locally famous cigar store.  I picked up the magazine and a cigar and sat on the bank of the Willamette reading my first article and smoking my first cigar.

Last week, the fine people at YMAA express mailed me a copy of the book right off the presses.  I had to wait until after work and it was too dark to sit on the deck and smoke a cigar and read, but the tradition has become pretty strong.  I puffed a little in the cloudy midnight and went inside and read.

It looks good.  I found one spelling error and one of the copy-editors really likes commas, but it reads pretty well.  There are places where I struggled with the formatting but that is what happens when you try to deal with a complicated subject.  Each thing affects many other things and the effects of stress have to be discussed in training and in application and in thinking and in the aftermath.

The pictures, a few provided by Critical Care Bio-Recovery (Thanks, Jennifer!) and martial friends and several taken by my wife are effective, even though the book was written without pictures in mind.

The foreword by Steve Barnes is powerful.  The advance praise is very good.

My local Barnes and Noble  and Borders and Powells have all assured me they are on order and will be on shelves very soon.

So I'm a little jazzed right now.  Life is very cool.

Adventure awaits.