How about that LeBron James?

The thing about basketball is, it can break your heart. I've been a Raptors ticket holder now for eight years, so I know a little about hope. And about how swiftly and easily it can be crushed into dust.

We played an amazing first quarter in Sunday's game against Cleveland. Breathtaking, fast, elegant offense (Chris Bosh with a behind-the-back pass!) and the most inspiring, suffocating defense. (Anthony Parker and Jamario Moon!) Oh, you should have seen it. It was stunning. I was stunned. Even the second and third quarters weren't terrible, although we did fritter away a 20-point lead (seriously, would it kill us to grab a rebound now and then?)

But in the fourth quarter, LeBron James woke up.

And that, my friends, was that.

On the brighter side, my editor called today and the manuscript is going ahead to the copy editor!! This means I have weeks before it comes back to me for revisions!!!! Just think of all the things I can get done: laundry, tidying, sorting my closet according to the Dewey Decimal System... And maybe, just maybe, this means the sequel isn't too deeply flawed after all.

But it's so hard to know. Striking just the right degree of alarm in a reader's heart is a tricky business. Parents worry that the characters spend too much time alone and unsupervised. But I fear boring the reader more than terrifying her. That is what keeps writers up at night I think. At least, it keeps me up. At 3:00 am I am often lying in bed, imagining a boy beginning to read The Legend of the Lost Jewels. He starts off well, his expression impenetrable but his fingers whipping through the pages. And then, he stops. Bored. Somehow, I have lost him. Somehow, the boy is no longer interested in what happens next. Like LeBron James for three quarters of a Sunday afternoon basketball game against the Toronto Raptors, he is thinking there is something else he'd rather do. Why did you stop reading, I ask. But before he can answer, I am jolted awake. The 3:35 am freight train is rumbling past.