Be right back.

Deadline calls. See ya in a month.

I have one month. The book I’ve been working on for nearly two years is due in one month. I don’t want to give too much of it away, but here are a few of the words I used in it:

free, without, didn’t, time, area, choice, cover, stars, big, photo, guard, drive, waited, schedule, window, bold, message, all, guitar, clarity, video, singing, or, chart, kid, final.

Those are just some.

But whenever the book has gotten in the way of my beautiful little email newsletter, REPLY ALT, I am usually stricken with guilt. “Your readers are expecting a new email!” my brain will shout at me. “Stop what you’re doing and send one out now now now they want it they neeeeed it!!” But in reality, most of you are probably not refreshing your inboxes until a new REPLY ALT comes in. (…Right?) But still, I feel the guilt. So, I just wanted to give you the heads up that I am about to be MIA for four weeks. This is the part of my work that would merit a training montage if a movie were to be made about my life (which would presumably star a very attractive actor as myself or at the very least one of the Air Bud dogs). The montage music will play and I will wake up at 5 AM and eat a cup of raw eggs and jog through the streets and lift heavy logs above my head and then remember I’m supposed to be writing and hurry back to my computer in a panic.

I also wanted to thank you for all the support until this point. This newsletter has kept me going, financially, creatively, and mentally this past year and I really appreciate the encouragement. REPLY ALT is going to be much different once I can turn my full attention to it after my book deadline (in a good way!). I will also be using it as a home for my excess book material, of which I have a lot, and behind-the-scenes stories and photos, etc. I’ll write more about that and clue you in on the project when I return.

But for now, I’m asking you to bear with me while I drag my failing corpse across the finish line. Enjoy the holidays and I’ll see ya on the other side if I make it.

Dan.

(Also, if you want to catch up on the last year of REPLY ALT, here’s the archive. You can listen to the podcast episodes here featuring interviews with Jonah Ray, Laura Stevenson, Sarah from Illuminati Hotties, lotsa cool folks. I did some Rank Your Records interviews with Jeremy Bolm from Touché Amoré, Dr. Frank from The Mr. T Experience, Tre McCarthy from Deathwish, Ryan Kattner from Man Man, Gared O’Donnell from Planes Mistaken for Stars. I wrote an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, and I followed the journey of this insane fr33k’s coffee habits. Plenty of stuff to keep you busy in my absence!)