6-16-09 | Hearing that Tom (“Big Al”) Schreiter was in Singapore, I email him to see if he and Ana might meet up there. Turns out he has just left for Thailand, but will be returning in August. Hey, we’re going in August, too, I write him, maybe we can meet up then.

6-13-09 | This past Wednesday (I know it was Wednesday because it happened to be my birthday!) I sent a little packet of business cards to my amazingly sweet and brilliant wife Ana, who (despite aforementioned amazing brilliance) had forgotten to bring them with her on Monday when she left on a trip to Singapore and Malaysia.

6-11-09 | Working on plans for the next book in the Go-Giver series (it’s coming — not till next spring, but it’s coming!), I just had an exchange with the wonderful Adrienne Schultz, our editor at Portfolio, the brilliant publishing house (an imprint of Penguin) who publishes The Go-Giver.

6-9-09 | Dixie Gillaspie, a good friend and Go-Giver trainer, just wrote me an email about money, in which she talked about growing with a father who was a product of the Great Depression, and growing into a sort of loathing of and resistance to money that she (like many of us, okay, most of us) has struggled to overcome.

5-25-09 | We just learned that The Go-Giver has been available for a while now in Afrikaans, under the title, Die Weg-Gewer: ‘n Storie oor ‘n Kragtige Sake-idee. You can find it here on the publisher’s site.

5-25-09 | A friend forwarded me an email from someone about doing a Twitter search on the phrase, “working on my novel.”

5-8-09 | I am often asked some variation of the “How do I get started as a writer?” question. Here’s the best answer I know, and it’s in three parts: 1) just start writing; 2) be willing to write crap, and then edit and improve like crazy; and most of all 3) read.

5-1-09 | Michael J. Fox is the kind of person who makes people feel good just by walking into a room.

4-20-09 | At work on a companion volume to The Go-Giver, I’ve been looking a little deeper into the whole business of adding value, since that’s the bedrock of the book’s “Five Laws of Stratospheric Success.” Which brought me to a thought about appreciation.

4-5-09 | Ana and I just got back from an afternoon at the public library of the next town over at a reading with bestselling author Dennis LeHane (Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone, et al.). It was fascinating.