Three of my last fourteen months have been spent here in Italy, sometimes for business, sometimes for pleasure. This time, it’s for a celebration of my wife’s x0th birthday, the first number being a secret. We’ve been here since 30 March and will return in another week, having spent a week in Venice, and then successive weeks in apartments in the hill towns of Cortona, Gualdo Tadino, and Narni.

It’s taken almost this long for relaxation to set in. Some difficulties with book production pushed the release date almost to the time of our departure; when it did come out a number of other problems presented themselves. Plus, in the United States the deadline for tax filings is 15 April, so I had to finish those up, and my taxes are rather complex.

Anyhow, I was a tired young man when I boarded the aircraft, and the first ten days or so here were intense as well. I met with all the people who were involved in the development of the PPW panel as well as several other friends. Italian get-togethers tend to be long ones, and to feature a lot of eating and drinking.

Things are somewhat back to normal now. The first month of sales apparently went well, granted that we had decided on a low-key introduction. Initial reactions are about what was expected, as those commenting after buying the book generally are in agreement with what was said by beta readers during the book’s preparation. We hope and expect that these early readers will get the word out to others as to their reactions to the project.

We’re setting up a page of comments about the book, starting with two from Italy about the beta reading process. Also, there’s now a page of errata and omissions, which we will try to keep updated as reactions come in.

One of these days I’ll take a stab at writing about Italy and what makes it special, but I hear that travel writing is even tougher than writing about color correction.