red shoes and a croissant

These shoes and this bakery is the short answer to how I celebrated completing my novel.

I'm big on ritual--the idea of it--and not-so-big on the follow-through. Typically when I finish a project I don't even pause to breathe before charging onto the next thing. I suppose this is a by-product of the day. Never enough hours and all of that. But with Stairway of Love, I did, actually, pause, contemplate, de-compress and pull out the Visa.