At long last, a mile post of consequence is in sight: The Last Track will be available for purchase in ten days. Or so. More on that later. First a few words about getting from a raw idea to a finished book.

This project was spurned by being laid off three days after returning from a honeymoon. It buoyed me through job changes, a divorce and separation and a number of train wreck relationships. Literally, there were times when the only sense of worth flowed from the viability of the manuscript.

If I ever needed a lesson in the whimsical nature of publishing, a former coworker provided a great one. They snagged a half-million dollar advance at a major publisher  for a book they spent two weeks writing. Meanwhile I had trouble getting agents to even agree to read a manuscript I had spent one out of every four waking hours on for nearly two years. Given the fact that this person could barely compose a coherent email, it was a bit disconcerting at times. Oddly, I needed to see that.

To me, viability does not necessarily translate into commercial prospects. I did not fantasize ( except a few times, on the darkest of days  ) how much money it might eventually earn. What kept me going was that I truly believed from the roughest and most primitive drafts that it was a story worth telling in novel form and that it would, someday, see print and be available for purchase. The Last Track was a story ( one of many ) I was supposed to tell.

In a weird way, I believe in Mike Brody as much as he believes in me. No matter how long the odds.

And the odds of any manuscript getting its day are fantastically long, especially these days. Big publishers have little patience for finding and growing talent. Small publishers believe in new writers but have limited promotional resources. The writer who wants to publish is left between a rock and a hard place alone with one option: Keep writing. That’s the only out. That’s the choice.

As for the release date of The Last Track, the best case scenario is that it will be available on February 13, 2010 on Amazon.com, but they are a Goliath to the publisher’s David and there’s been a tremendous amount of change on their massive back-end systems lately which has greatly complicated things for the little guy. On a related point, I do know that initially purchasing from a bookstore will mean special ordering it–although this will be an option throughout the US and Europe. Not sure about Canada yet. Currently, the Kindle version looks like it’s going to make it in time. Really what matters to me is that the publisher is doing everything humanly possible to make it work in the time frame, regardless of the obstacles.

So the absolute worst case scenario: the publisher has some signed copies on hand and can sell them through their website with a free priority shipping upgrade. Unless there is a mail strike, that will be ready to go on the 13th.

And that works for me. I’ve held the finished product, and it looks good.

It’s come a long way from a random conversation in the woods many years ago.

Only Rip Torn could get away with committing a de facto armed bank robbery–with an unlicensed gun, no less. But if you can dodge a wrench, well, then you can dodge a felony charge.

Even those who lack a subscription to cable television can’t avoid the new MTV reality TV show, Jersey Shore. A bunch of hipster urbanites from well, mostly outside of New Jersey, get drunk and pump their fists. For these and other antics they have netted one of the largest rating share for a reality television show since Jon and Kate Disintegrate and some sweet paychecks. 10k an episode which works out to roughly 500 bucks a pump. Nice. They do almost as well as some of our hookers.

Like many others, I watched Snooki get cold cocked by a well-tanned and manicured fist on Youtube.  My friends of Italian descent complain of the stereotypes the show perpetuates frequently. In diners, long expositions from the under 25 set seated nearby about how stupid the show is, while simultaneously recounting their favorite episode scene by scene, abound. New Jersey magazine all but condemned the show in a recent issue. And I gotta say, what is the fuss about, exactly?

To be fair, I am not a Jersey boy by birth. My residence pedigree is rather mixed. I was born in the Midwest, and landed here on a near full-time basis in 1991, and went “pro” in 1995.  Only one Jersey Shore cast member has lived in the Garden State longer. And I truly have a love-hate relationship with this place, the sort of sentiment that can only come from being a long term transplant. Thus I feel like I know a little bit about this state.

New Jersey rests up on the visions of characters and caricatures. We have our local heroes, such as Bruce Springsteen, Bon Jovi, Thomas Edison, Kevin Smith and Kirstin Dunst. OK, Dunst, not so much. Our politics is the stuff of high satire, only it’s real.

Two administrations ago, as his wife and children looked on, our governor announced he was a gay American on national television. The last mayor of Newark is in Federal prison. When an organ trafficking operation needed someplace to locate, they chose the Garden State. Jimmy Hoffa might be resting beneath a concrete structure somewhere in our borders.  There are more than twenty school districts with neither schools, nor students. Don’t worry, these student-less districts do employ a small army of administrators and superintendents, which keeps them off the unemployment rolls. So we do our part for the economy.

But besides useless facts about the education system, I have learned from my nearly twenty years in this state one clear lesson: NJ exports what it wants to avoid dealing with. Corruption? We wrote the book on it. Runaway budget deficits? Us. Excruciating property taxes and prohibitively expensive car insurance rates? NJ leads the way. Jersey Shore is just the latest example of us spreading the pain. The thing is, most people would rather watch their own puppy drown than hit a club in Seaside ( the alleged Jersey Shore haunt ) during the summer.

And now, with any luck, it will be the last place the rest of America wants to go, too. But should you like the Jersey Shore, it’s all good, you’ll be getting a lot more of it than you ever imagined. Or probably wanted. So suck deeply the warm scent of over powering cologne and perfume. Follow the blinding sight of hair gel glistening in the sun. Crank up the dial on your tanning bed. Tease your hair like it’s 1983.  Hit the gym like a juice head. Do your laundry daily.

And know that each time viewership for Jersey Shore increases, you and your neighbors are becoming a little more Jersey.

And you will have been warned.

Almost a year ago to the day, my mother was diagnosed with an extremely aggressive form of cancer. At the time it was a bit of shock, largely because she was the sort of person who was healthy, and because there was until that moment no trace of cancer in the family ever manifested itself. Like at all. Women in our family live into their nineties. They generally die because well, 96 is fricking old. Something critical wears out eventually.

I can remember the very moment my mother felt sorry for herself; it lasted about as long as it took her to ask the doctor when the treatments would start. Roughly between five and fifteen seconds. Before the doctor finished explaining what had to happen next, pity part over.

And she fought like Muhammad Ali gearing up for the George Foreman fight. Her very own Rumble in the Jungle. Except the title in question was a lot more important. There were good days, ok days and really awful days. There were days the drugs and the radiation fogged her mind so completely, her confusion was palpable.

For the next six months, the one thing she kept coming back to was numbers. As in how many treatments remained. She did everything they asked and more.

So it’s a year later now, and yesterday Mom and I went out for some fast food, the first she had eaten in over a year. And she asked me if I wanted anything for my birthday. In my mind, there could be only one answer.

“I already got everything I want. You’re still here.”