The clock is ticking. I’ve been setting up the distribution for The Incident Under the Overpass, and doing all the necessary tasks so that it will be available for sale on September 6, 2016.

The day after Labor Day. (here in the U.S.)

48 days from now.

Yikes.

A refresher: The Incident Under the Overpass is the story of Lacey Becnel, a New Orleans native who discovers, through a series of supernatural occurrences, that she possesses the power to heal. (I wrote it).

After returning from vacation last week, I was happily ho-humming along, taking my time getting back into the swing of things. Just before vacation, I had submitted the necessary files to get proofs of both the print and digital versions of the book, and then checked out, figuratively and literally.

Time and reality body-checked me this past weekend, though. On Saturday, I met with some friends that I’ll refer to as the Marketing Muses. I’ll keep their identities anonymous to protect the innocent. We all work in promotions/marketing, each with different skill sets. The Marketing Muses very generously offered to assist me with the digital/design/web stuff I’ll need for this book launch, because these are NOT my skill sets.

Besides assisting with these things, the Marketing Muses gently reminded me that my content in this space here has not said much about The Incident Under the Overpass at all lately.

Hmmm, had to ‘fess up to that. The whole reason I started this blog was to shine a light on this dual life of mine, my secret life as a fiction writer. And while I could defend all my posts to a blog tribunal—because family, travel, movies, random thoughts, all inform my writing life—given the looming date of September 6, I should probably start saying something more about this novel that I wrote.

“What about my Ray Bradbury post?” I asked the Marketing Muses. That one is mostly done, so I was angling for a gimme.

“Not for the next 48 days, unless you can tie it to the book somehow,” answered the Marketing Muses.

“So I guess the same goes for ‘Gilligan’s Island vs. Firefly?’” I asked, hopeful.

You can guess the answer to that one.

In all honesty, the realization of just how soon Anne McClane will go public—like IPO kinda public—brought on a pretty rough bout of anxiety. There’s the social anxiety over talking to people and promoting the book. And the review-induced anxiety of “what if everybody thinks it’s crap?” And the what’s-my-place-in-the-universe anxiety: this was kind of a big one.

The anxiety’s still there, but it’s down to the normal, manageable levels now. But just a note on place-in-the-universe. All the horrible, senseless, cataclysmic violence of the past two months, and so much of it in just the past two weeks—it’s a significant weight. And all of it outside the “usual” horrible, senseless, cataclysmic violence of what we typically call war. I don’t feel right writing about these recent events. Part of that is respect for the victims, and not wanting to add to the noise; and a big part of that is not knowing what I could possibly write to ameliorate, to alleviate the pain.

But that’s when a little nugget of hope lodged in my brain. It seems there’s a lot of people, everywhere, in need of healing. And here’s me, and this story I wrote, about a women who possesses a supernatural ability to heal.

It may be small in the grand scheme of the universe, but size is a very relative thing.

*Yes, the title of this post references Europe’s 1986 song, “The Final Countdown.” This one isn’t final because I plan many more book launches in my lifetime.