I sent my book to my editors and designated readers this week.  After spending three years with it in the privacy of my home and mind, letting others read it is a bit of a frightening thought.  But it is also the point of writing a book (unless you are J.D. Salinger and prefer to keep your manuscripts locked away in a vault).

This morning I found the napkins on which my book began.  It was July of 2007 and I was on a flight to Milwaukee to visit Becki.  We were still dating at a distance.   She moved to Lawrence in December of that year.  The possibility of a book had been tumbling about in my head like clothes in a dryer for some time.  That being the case, I decided to brainstorm on that flight on a napkin provided by Midwest Airlines.  I wrote down ideas for potential chapters.  Some of the ideas stuck and actually became chapters.  Some of them crashed and burned shortly after this flight. Three months later I began writing The Stained-Glass Kaleidoscope.