As my Lexmark spits out the last few pages of my first novel, I serve up kudos, rounds of applause, and two thumbs up to you:  Poe, Melville, and Crane. Not only for your obvious literary genius, but also for your strength while toiling away over your manuscripts with gusto, dipping your quills into wobbly bottles of ink made of charcoal and soot. A damned feather you used – no small wonder you imbibed. You inspired me you crazy fools.

I bow down to you, who wrote using only a pencil, or a Remington #2 typing machine where Herculean strength and the heft of an ox was needed to depress the keys. Tenacious you were, real bastions, and I stand in awe of your determination.

Cheers to you, the many authors whose creative work might possibly have been fueled by the fumes of Whiteout, its psychosis inducing empty bottles laying about your desks – the fog served you well.

To you, Google Earth, my passport to the hinterlands of the far-flung States of which I write. I tip my hat to you, Big Brother – you saved me.

And a toast to the geeks, whose technological wizardry made this all possible – the Gates of the world whose software enabled the single handed slaying of entire paragraphs, towns, or even characters full of Times New Roman text – wielding only a mouse, my merciless mercenary. For this…I esteem you.

I’ve been told to do “something” with my writing since I was old enough to hold a pencil. I’ve been told that I am “deep” for just about as long. What I’ve heard the most though, is that I need to put my “imagination”, this wild mind of mine, to good use somehow - good use most certainly meaning earn some money while you’re daydreaming s’il vous plait.

But that “something” would not have been possible had I had to pound away my prose on the old turquoise Smith Corona I used in high school, or God forbid, compose by hand with penmanship that stopped developing somewhere around the third grade.  The manuscript would’ve hit the trash, the typewriter would’ve hit the wall, and I inevitably would’ve hit the bottle.

But you, you Titans of technology allowed me to create a world where people don’t simply walk, talk, and breathe – they saunter, debate heatedly, and gasp short gulps of air. And on a whim I can make them, peruse, converse, and inhale deeply with no need to toss the paper and start over.  I exalt you.

And of course XXXOOO to the wind beneath my wings - my friends (especially Paul DeLuca and Gracie Feldman) and to my family, the mob that you are, who patiently listened and encourged while I wrote.

You empowered me, all a y’all, and I thank you – you always told me I could do it mom, and I did.