Well, I've been "dark" now, for about three months.

Since March 16th, in fact, when I traveled down to see my younger sister, Carrie, in Pennsylvania, who was in the hospital for cancer treatment. When I talked to folks on Tuesday, they said it looked a little iffy, but the doctor was discussing treatment options. Things didn't turn out anything like what folks hoped/wanted, and Carrie never got the chance for treatment, but crashed and burned in the most traumatic way. Long story short, my sister Carrie passed away on Sunday, March 19th at 9:00 a.m., less than two weeks before her 40th birthday.

So, I apologize for the silence, but it's been a rocky, busy time, and about the last thing I've been thinking about is my blogging. I mean, what do you say about things like podcasting and print publishing that seem even mildly proportionately important, when the memory of the up-close death of your younger sister is sitting across the kitchen table from you, each and every night, like an overbearing, rude houseguest that won't leave?

That's changing, now. Slowly, but surely, as my re-emergence here attests. Times change, things change, and we adjust to the world around us. I'm not sure I'll ever adjust to this change -- I had four sisters, just four months ago, and each of us has always been as different from the others, as the points in the compass are from each other. In a very real way, it feels like one of the directions has fallen off my own compass, and now I need to figure out how to orient myself in the world, yet again.

I friggin' hate death. It really, really, really sucks.

I don't care what anyone says about it sometimes being a blessing. Sure, if you're in excruciating pain or you've outlasted your welcome on the planet, it may seem like it could be, in some short-range, immediate gratification sort of way. But it still sucks.

Looking back at my calendar for this year up until this past March, it amazes me, how very busy I'd been. My calendar is/was full, day after day, week after week, month after month, from January, on... till my note that I was driving down to to PA. Then blank pages. Day after day after day of blank. As though everything had stopped. I guess it had, in a way. All the exuberance I had for my projects, all the enthusiasm that drove me for months and months and even years, just kinda fizzled out, in the face of this new void in my life. All the excitement that just jumped off the page about the things I was doing, making, creating... Then blank. Nada. Zip. Precious little more than just going to work each day. Just taking care of business. Helping my partner, Laney, with her drumming circles... putting out her weekly nationally syndicated radio show... working away, each day at the office, to make things happen... and not screw it all up... I was intently focused at work, and I think I got a lot of stuff done, but I don't remember much from the past three months or so.

Except for this book I've written.

Back at the end of April, I happened upon a story about Kaavya Viswanathan, a Harvard student who got "dinged" for supposedly plagiarizing passages from her first "chick-lit" novel. There was all this hullabaloo in the literary world, a lot of accusations and denials, and real mortification at her publisher Little, Brown & Co. about getting stuck with a dud, and in a very public way, no less. They eventually pulled the book "How Opal Mehta Got Wild, Got Kissed and Got a Life" (it had one too many similiarities to the likes of Megan McCafferty and -- believe it or not -- Salman Rushdie), and the story died down on the literary scene. But I'd already got to thinking about the parallels between Kaavya Viswanathan and a lot of the Indian IT folks I've worked with, over the past years. The similarities were just too delicious to pass up, so I decided to write a book about it.

It's a project I've been wanting to embark on, for quite some time. Years, in fact. But since I was once gainfully employed by one of the most eggregious exploiters of "cyber-coolies" I've encountered, and I was leery of biting the hand that fed me, I held my peace. I also didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings. But I've been away from that tightly clenched hand for about six months, now, and I'm starting to feel bold and daring again (after years of feeling anything *but* bold and daring), and there's no time like the present, to put this book out. Plus, I have to move quickly, before Kaavya's name disappears into the woodwork... or everybody else gets a book about her to market. I mean, it's not like she's Elvis. Who knows what kind of longevity her legend will have? If I'm going to maximize efficiencies and leverage my knowledge base to seize valuable opportunities at just the right juncture of the time-space-continuum, I've gotta move. And so I am.

Which is yet another great reason to be an independent publisher working with Lulu.com. Because if I want to write a book and put it out there - presto change-o! - I can. Ha! I don't have to wait for budget cycles or editorial dispensation or work around someone else's self-aggrandizing agenda. I can do it myself. As I see fit. The way I choose. When I choose. I can do this. Sure I can!

And so, I am.

My book is entitled, "Bring Me the Head of Opal Mehta -- Of Art, Outsourcing, Kaavya Viswanathan, and the Narcissus Machine", and it will be available in July at a Lulu.com web page near you. Proceeds from sales will benefit the work my sister Carrie used to do -- I'm not sure exactly how or who or to what extent (I've got to call her husband Steve and ask what would be a good way to do it), but this book will (in however small a way) help to carry on the work that she wasn't permitted to do nearly as long as she should have been. And if you buy a copy, you'll be helping, too.

And so, once again, death gives way to life. I return to the land of bright sun and living colors, squinting a little from all that sunlight, ready to rock the world of multinational globalization initiatives with a whole lot of words, a whole lot of inside experience, and a whole lot of need to tell the truth.

Onward.

I miss you, Carrie. We all do.