Actually, the coolest gift I got this Christmas was from my brother, a set of red-wine glasses. No, not red-wine-colored glasses that distort everything you see so that you think you’re drunk. But rather wine goblets, stemware, specifically designed for drinking red wine out of them. It was exactly what I wanted!

I’m not a wine snob. Really. I’m only a wannabe wine snob.

Now, you might not think that it matters what you drink red wine out of. After all a glass is a glass, right? Anything more is just for decoration. But you would be incorrect. You might think that those beautiful white wine glasses that a friend gave me years ago, they’d be just as useful to drink red wine out of. But that wouldn’t be quite right. You might think that the generic cheapo wine glass that I’ve been drinking my red wine out of, the only one left that hasn’t been knocked off the counter and shattered into a million pieces, that I wouldn’t be able to tell one bit of difference whether I used that old glass or one of these new goblets. But if you were to see a good wine poured into this crystal chalice, if you were to inhale as its delicate walls funneled the bouquet toward your longing olfactory organs, if you…

I’m sorry. I forgot where I was going with that.

I’ve been absent here, because I’m working on a new novel. After collecting mounds of marketing data, I’ve discovered that I absolutely must write Confessions of a Veteran Software Developer— That’s not a novel, but a true story of my years as a professional software developer. However, I have to find a new title. (Apparently, lots of people love the concept, but no one—and I mean literally no one—cares for the title.) So I have to write Confessions, but I can’t yet, because I’m still planning that book.

Another thing I discovered is that when it comes to fiction, it really doesn’t matter what I write. Really. At some point, it probably will matter, because I’ll have fans that expect certain characteristics from my books. But for now, if I wan’t to be a novelist, the first thing I believe I have to do is to write like Nora Roberts (or Danielle Steel). That is, I don’t have to write the same kind of material they do—Thank God! But I need to write as prolifically as they, or at least as close as I can get.

Nora Roberts has published 211 books over the past 28 years, about one book every 7 weeks. Danielle Steel works at a similar pace.

I have quite a bit of catching up to do.