Today I’m meeting with a marketing professional to get some highly paid advice concerning a series of inventions I have, and how to get them out in the marketplace. It dawned on me, as I was contemplating this, that I’m too old to be fishing around for a new career.

That might have been true 30 years ago, when people hit 60 and started to think seriously about retiring and taking it easy. I will be able to retire with a pension in less than 16 months. I am far from taking it easy at this point.

Now, will I work a few more years and really balloon up the 401k? Will I run for the door the minute I am able to do so and try some other things? Not really sure. But what I do know is that I have some ideas and want to explore them.

Among those ideas is an advanced career in audio books. Am I one of the greats of the industry? Not yet. But if you look on Amazon and Audible, you will find quite a few titles I have done, especially for the books of Michael DiMercurio. You see, he was kind enough to invite me to do his back-list and get them out there as quickly as possible. He’s a forgiving task-master, knowing that I have the full-time day job, Santa, and writing. But my 6th book on his series is coming out in the next few weeks (someone else had done book #1 years ago), and I’m excited. Once I finish his back-list, I’d like to work on some other peoples books as well. That requires more time: the kind you get when you retire.

I’d like to expand the time I spend as Santa. I’m at the point where I can really work as much as I want, and thus the main restriction is the – you guessed it – day job. Santa makes about 8 times more per hour than Joe, so I’d like to have him work a bit more.

I’d like to get back in with my theatrical agents and work more as an actor/voice over talent. I realize that I’m new in many ways, and that I need to put in some more dues, but I’d like to work more in that field.

Writing. What can I say? I have so many books that I want to write, and that I have under wraps on the hard drive, but not enough hours in the day to do them all. Again, not working 40 a week at the day job would help with that! And, for those wondering, the sequel to Assault on Saint Agnes is in progress, to be finished this year.

Finally, as I started this thing, I have a handful of diverse inventions that are, frankly, brilliant. They are mundane things that I’ve designed that will dramatically improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in a special profession in one case, and in the other they’ll protect your laptop and your lunch coffee much better than current products do the job. Yeah, kind of vague, but if this thing goes like it should, there will be a retirement at an early date.

Then again, perhaps none of it will pan out. Perhaps the audio books die off, the inventions flop, and my agents hire better actors while reading someone else’s books. But if I don’t give it a shot, none of it will happen.

I’m going to try my best to make it work. On all counts.

Just by the way, if you’re a best-selling author who needs their audio books narrated, or a brilliant manufacturer who wants to make a serious pile of cash off of some inventions, give me a shout in the comments.

In the meantime, go buy the audio books I’ve recorded, and the books I’ve written, to help me finance these dreams.

Thanks. Oh, and say a prayer.

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NEW BOOK IS OUT!

My second novel, Nicholas of Haiti, is now available. Go fetch your credit card for the Kindle, print, and audio book versions. This is not a sequel to Assault on Saint Agnes, but a unique book in the speculative Christian fiction world.

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