Yeah right. It took me about 6 or 8 hours to write, spread out over several days, but I'd been putting it together in my head for months (years actually, the story is an amalgam of years of sailing out to Anclote Key, every thing in the story actually happened, although not all on the same trip). Then came about two weeks of rewrites, changing words, phrases, sentences, whole paragraphs. Moving them around, adding, removing, fiddling with the punctuation to try and get the pacing, flow and rhythm right. In the meantime, I'm communicating with my artist, sending emails back and forth until the illos capture exactly what I have in mind (he lives in Michigan! He's never been to the key.), And when you figure all the stuff I've worked just as hard at but that no one would buy...well, I've guess I'm working for considably less than minimum wage. Not that I'm complaining, seeing your name on the printed page and knowing someone was willing to pay you good money for your labor is indeed, priceless.

Something the economists have never been able to understand, labor isn't just about money. People want to work, they love to work, they have to work, it's a very human thing. Work isn't just about money any more than love is just about sex. When labor becomes a commodity, when it is bought and sold strictly for the money, it becomes a form of prostitution.