Die Now

I have heard that the Greeks would yell “Die Now” to winners of races and events because the competitor had reached the apex of their life and everything following that victory would be shallow and meaningless. When I heard this, it reminded me of my friends that had peaked in grade school, middle school and high school. I always took this to be a cautionary lesson on success. I felt it was best not to peak until later in life. I seem to have mastered that, until today.

I logged on to RedRosePublishing.com and found the compendium of vignettes that I coauthored with Cara Preston, better known as “Pickup Lines From a Pickup Truck,” listed as the tenth best seller in the Mainstream category of my publisher.

Should I die now? Is this the acme of my career? Is the rest of my life to be spent in speakeasy’s and dives, me assuring an aged audience of a toothless entourage that in 2007 I was on the bestseller list of an internet publisher’s list of mainstream romances?

While I love my publisher and believe internet publishing and ebooks are the future of the industry, I refuse to believe that this is my “die now” moment. I just hope that I am still lucid enough to recognize whether it is or isn’t. It would be a tragedy for me to find out that as a seventy year old, after winning a volleyball tournament for diabetic amputees, that this was my moment, and I fucking missed it.

Let’s hope and pray that I haven’t peaked yet!

Spike