When I was in college, I dated a girl from New Jersey. She talked a lot about the ocean and I didn't understand. You use no more of the ocean than you do the lakes in Missouri and it's salt water, so you casn't even enjoy it as much as you can the lakes of my home.

A few visits to the ocean didn't change my opinion because I was never at the waterfront to understand what she meant. Even liuving in New Hampshire, I'm inland enough that the state doesn't even seem like a coastal state. I'm surrounded by trees and small mountains and that's wonderful.

But when Jen and I stayed in Rockport with a room overlooking the ocean (along with a deck we could sit on to be that much closer), I finally understood. It's not the ocean, it's the tide. Without the tide, the Atlantic isn't much more than Lake Michigan. Throw in the perpetual rhythm of the waves, the gravitational pull of the moon, and rthe rise anf fall of the tides and the ocean truly does seem like a living entity. I feel compelled to live next to it. Not in a town nearby, but a home that opens to the water.

If the oceans rise, I may get my wish without ever leaving Nashua. Otherwise it's up to me to find a home on the existing coast. What's the trick? Those places aren't cheap! A townhome costs $700,000. A house? $3.5 million or more. The house I like the best starts at $4.5 million.

There are two ways, then, I'll be able to satisfy my compulsion: win the lottery or make a crapload of money. How do authors make that much money? Huge sales yielding higher advances for future works combined with successful movies and marketing.

What advance do I expect for Black Magice and Barbecue Sauce? Between $2000 and $5000. $10,000 would be awesome!

The realistic goal for that book is to earn out my advance, not make millions from a movie and merchandising. I don't have a compact succession of events that can form a series of Barbecue books. I have no idea whether the two ideas I have in my head will even beae fruit or if I'll have to start on a new project all together.

So what does this all mean? It means I have no false illusions of what to expect as a novice author (though I conspicuously left out the option of not signing an agent or selling to a publisher in my assessment above) and that I need to win the lottery so I can live on the ocean.