Ketchup

Yes, I'm alive. It's been really busy. The new book is getting sizzling hot and I hope to be able to share more about it soon.

In the meantime, I'm not sure if I fatally scrooched this blog. They told me I needed to "migrate" it to this new url because they were modifying the FTP, whatever that is, so I took a stab at following their step-by-step direction. I thought I'd actually done it. Then I was greeted with this:

We were unable to verify that the migration completed. You can either manually verify that your FTP blog's pages include "rel=canonical" and "meta refresh" by viewing the source code of your pages in your browser.

To which I say, WTF?

All of the comments seem to have vaporized as well. So. If you can read this, let me know? Anybody out there?

Nevertheless, it's tough to be too upset about blooching the blog. Check out this CNN video from Haiti. Whenever I'm feeling stressed about my deadlines or the car needing to go the dealership, whenever I'm grumpy in traffic, stressed, whatever, all I've got to do is look at parts of the world like this.

About a minute into the video, Sean Penn walks up to talk to an Army major in a blue U.N. beret. This officer is my step-brother Brian Woolworth, who was instrumental in schooling me in various matters for the Plague Year novels. I've got a huge amount of respect for honorable madmen like Brian.

What an interesting life it must be in the Special Forces, yes? Chasing drug runners in Columbia. Taking mortar fire in Afghanistan. Chatting it up with Hollywood celebs in the quake-ravaged desolation of Haiti.

All in a day's work.

Labels: CNN, Haiti, U.S. Army Special Forces