There is nothing like approaching a major life milestone (and being to busy to go have any fun) to make you realize what the little things in life are that make you happy.

Like frothing up low fat milk in a mason jar and then adding it to a cup of well-steeped herbal chai tea to make a fancy chai tea latte. Who needs Starbucks? Starbucks are for rich writers who have clean pants to wear outside. If I had to go to a coffee shop every time I needed a cup of tea, I’d just take a tent with me and live there.

Or like figuring out you can make an awesome 2-minute ginger-tofu soup with Trader Joe’s boxed miso broth, and as long as you’re at the store picking it up, you can get one of those $3 boxes of cocoa truffles…

Or even finally figuring out how to get your boba pearls the right consistency when you want to make milk tea. (Again, if I had to go to a tea shop every time I needed a cup of boba, I’d just take a tent with me and live there.)

I’ve also started buying artechokes in four packs. No one in the house eats them. I know it’s not a traditional writer food, but I’ve spent too much time with the dark cabaret and punk folk crowd not to love them with a strange reverent joy.

I basically live off of artichokes, tea, tofu, and chocolate right now.

The last two weeks before book release are the worst two weeks. I tried to front-load as much of my work as possible, and successful though that was, there’s still a ton of stuff that needs to be addressed in live-time while we hurtle toward my pseudo-release day. I feel a little awkward hyping everyone up for release day next month when the print copies aren’t going to head out until June.

The good news is Amazon discounted my books! They’re down from $10 to $7.08! If you haven’t already pre-ordered a copy, now is the time to do it!

The Neverland Wars got a lovely review today over at Reading Is Better With Cupcakes, so if you wanted to pop over there and give Stephanie some traffic/comments, I’m sure she’d appreciate it.

I beat my Tetris high score yesterday and I’ve been reading too many nihilist memes on Facebook and Twitter. Nothing seems real. I can’t believe my book is coming out two weeks from today.