Any distraction at all will kill the following fifteen minutes of writing. At my kitchen window, scribbling this sequel to Lighthouse Island by hand, I wonder if the cat is going to fall into the pool.

It’s a 500-gallon cattle tank, on a deck, a little bit of rainforest here in this dry July, and I wonder if he falls in, does he have enough sense to swim to that lawn chair in the water and get out? Of course. There went fifteen, twenty minutes.