yeah, that's the Ticket, baby!

It was an exciting weekend here at the Beynon homestead. My sweet missus was away for the weekend leaving me with the kids. It was great...but tiring.

What I would really like to know is who sneaks into the house and slips the kids the cocaine. Seriously, one second everything will be fine. Everyone will be full of love and happiness and then something happens and all hell lets loose.

Now I worked extra hard this weekend monitoring for the early signs of escalation and headed each potential derailer of harmony off at the pass but I was doomed to fail from the start. There's two of them and even though I'm the adult...they're smarter than me.

All told, there was no blood and only some tears and most of those were shed by me late in the day when I had finally cajoled, bargained and sang the kids to sleep.

When my wife came home on Sunday afternoon two lightning streaks swept by me to greet her. You'd have thought I'd had them in shackles from their reaction. I was equally glad to see her, though she did show up just as Mike Weir and Tiger Woods were closing in on the fifteenth hole of the President's Cup and thus had to wait for her hug.

Last night after the children were asleep I had to retreat for about an hour and a half to the basement to finish polishing The Platinum Ticket for submission to Jim Baen's Universe. I had forgotten about the September 30th deadline until earlier in the day. Fortunately I was able to tweak a few parts that needed some attention and get it submitted. Now the waiting game begins.

My wife has lent the manuscript for Patriot to a few of her colleagues at work and so far all of the feedback has been very positive. I've let a few friends take a gander at it as well and it has been received with some enthusiasm. Currently the manuscript stands at 112 pages - a typical length for an entry in the 3 Day Novel Contest - but Patriot could easily be fleshed out to full novel length without losing any of the spirit of the story.