Nhorad,

My apologies, I lost your letter. I’d just read it quickly and meant to mark it as unread so that I’d know to answer it later but hit the wrong button and it was irredeemably trashed.

But I do remember your subject. I have to agree with your principal that a student drenched from head to toe is probably not going to be the most attentive (I’m suffering from jet-lag and an airline cold, which is part of why I’m up in the middle of the night accidentally deleting e-mails). I used to ride a motorcycle in Ireland when I went to college and I’d often arrive frozen and shivering.

As to your determination to finish your book — great! I’m sure you will. And, let me tell you, whether the book ever gets published or not, that first book will always mean something special to you (I know, I still look back at the first book I wrote — also unpublished — with great affection). When you finish the book, consider writing some short stories — they take the same effort at world-building (a lot of people, like my mother, cheat and re-use the same ‘world’ as the setting for a slew of stories, coincidentally building a ready-for-market anthology) but they take less time to finish over all.

Cheers and apologies,
Todd

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