Gargoyle

After I finished the first draft of Sins of Blood and Stone (my first novel, published in 2002; the first draft dates to 1996), I left Long Island and moved to Florida.  A good friend of mine, Gina, gave me this gargoyle as a going away gift.

For eight years, he read in my room and/or office, and guarded me from all the things from which gargoyles guard you.  But he was unable to accompany me to Australia, so in 2004 he took a position protecting the things we left behind.

He’d done a good job.  Nothing was missing when we returned, late in 2006.  Nothing, that is, except the gargoyle himself.

After almost three years on the official Missing in Action rolls, he emerged this evening every bit the hero.  Still modest.  Still content to sit and read and, whilst it may not appear so, guard and protect.