Normally I wake up at 6:30. Today, I woke a little after 4:00. Why? Maybe I’d had too much coffee the day before. Maybe I hadn’t gotten enough exercise.

Or maybe I had a character issue I had to resolve.

I’m not sure about the coffee or the amount of exercise (I ran for twenty minutes, though I sometimes do twice that many). But the character issue? That I’m sure about. The character’s name is Uncle Mike. He’s a major player in the book I’m working on, for which I’ll shortly be initiating a Kickstarter campaign. It’s called I Am The Salamander and it’s one of the coolest stories I’ve ever written. But this one character…this one furshlugginer character…he didn’t like where I was going with him.

And he and I, we had to have a talk about it. A talk that couldn’t wait till morning, apparently. So we talked. We hashed things out. And he won, as characters always do. All’s well again in his world. In mine, I had to get up at 4:00. Uncle Mike is sleeping the sleep of the just. I’m writing this blog, watching the sun come up, knowing what kind of day follows a mercilessly abbreviated night.

Ah, the life of a writer.