Happy New Year!
Sorry to be late in updating the page. I got a nasty Christmas present about ten days ago, a gangrenous appendix. I was in the middle of my usual manic December crash to finish the new book, and I had a couple of days of fever.
Since I'm usually working 18-20 hours at a stretch during this time, a little fever was no surprise. Well, by the third day, I was out of my head. Even this isn't so unusual during a finish-the-book crash, when I'm living almost totally in a fictional world. But when it reached the point where I couldn't recognize my own father and brother, my father (a physician) realized that I was in septic shock. Due to the genetic lottery of having a backward-facing appendix, I apparently could get very sick without the usual pain accompanying a dying appendix. To make a long story short, massive IVs and emergency surgery quickly ensued, and I woke up with hardly any memory of what had happened (not to mention the big, old-fashioned Hemingway-type scar - no laparoscopy for me.) The upside was, I got to view my book-in-progress through the semi-hallucinatory lens of a Dilaudid PCA pain pump, which was not altogether disagreeable. I found it rather strange that a few days before, doing research, I had been talking to a doctor about what it's like to use one of these things, and suddenly, without warning, I awakened on one myself. Woo-hoo. I owe a lot of people for pulling me through what was definitely a touch-and-go experience. Most know who they are, but my special thanks go out to Dr. Geoff Flattman and all the nurses and aides at the Natchez Community Hospital.
As for the new Penn book (Unwritten Laws), my usual 5,000-10,000 word-per-day peak December performance definitely hit a wall, but today I am finally back in the saddle, albeit not so obsessively, and paying a little more attention to what my body is telling me. I will try to update more conscientiously in future. Also, the paperback of The Devil's Punchbowl hits stores today, so if you haven't read it, now's your chance to do it cheap.
Again, Happy New Year!
Greg
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