When we moved to this house, the ten-foot palm tree at the end of the driveway appeared to be holding up a thick limb of the nearby pine tree. Of course, that wasn't true, the two had merely run into each other. The arborist advised us to remove the pine, as the roots were half out of the ground, and so it went. The pine tree is now mulch; the palm taller than Jack's beanstalk. 

The moral: It's all up from here. And that about sums up my past month, as I have programmed and launched my website and Facebook fan page, decided/undecided on a cover, recited my pitch to total strangers, and started learning the language of social media, which is marketing of a sort, but not the Wharton marketing of my earlier life. Here's a story I heard at a workshop: Agent calls publisher, wants to pitch book. Publisher asks, how many followers does the author have? Agent replies, don't you want to hear the pitch? No, says the publisher, but call me when the number hits forty thousand. 

Well, Facebook tells me my followers increased 457% this week; that's from a few to 40 plus -- so like the palm tree I have a long way to go, but with a little help from my friends (old and new), I'm growing every day.