It is December 30th and I'm in a wonderfully chilly Alexandria, Virginia. Why here? Let's put this in the Boy-Life-Sure-Has-A-Way-Of-Smacking-You-In-the-Mouth department. Back in November, our 29-year old daughter was in a terrible car accident and suffered multiple injuries that sent her to the hospital for ten days. The night she was brought in, a 5-hour long surgery was needed to patch up a spinal injury that resulted from the crash, which also broke several ribs, her scapula, collarbone, and collapsed a lung.

My wife and I have been up here to help her assimilate back into the world, and she's doing really well. At this point, she's driving again (a new car, as the old one was totalled) and doing everything with the exception of bending or twisting at the waist too dramatically. I was back and forth to work, but my wife was able to get extended FMLA leave, and has been here for nearly seven weeks straight. Yes, we're ready to go home, and our daughter is ready to navigate life on her own again. The silver lining--there almost always is one or two--is that we spent #Thanksgiving, #Christmas, and New Year's here. We'll leave here January 2nd. Being home alone in #Miami has given me a lot of time to catch up on writing, and on preparing my memoir for publication. I no longer am represented by a literary agent for this work, and have decided to go with self-publishing. The "pro" of that is that I control when and how the book comes out. I haven't decided on an exact roll-out date yet, but I am confident that Badge, Tie, and Gun: Life and #Death Journeys of a Miami Detective

will be on #Amazon and several other book outlets by mid-February, latest, as I tidy up book cover designs and final formatting. I'm excited. By that time, I will have also finished the first draft of Dear Chief, a #novel that I am also quite excited to get in the hands of the reading public. I haven't decided which path I will take as yet, and I might go with traditional publishing there. Have a wonderfully joyous, safe, and prosperous New Year!