At the risk of paraphrasing a classic song from the late 1970s, I’m back in Arizona after a whirlwind long weekend running through various parks at Walt Disney World.  I’m still a bit tired – it will take a few more days to recover from putting that many miles on my body – but the afterglow of managing to complete the coast-to-coast challenge will remain far longer.  I know that there are far more seasoned runners out there who regularly run back-to-back long-distance races; for me, the thought of doing two half-marathons less than six weeks apart had me more than a little panicked, enough, perhaps, that I followed the training guidelines nearly to the letter.  I’m glad I did as it helped to know, psychologically, that I could complete the distance comfortably.  My times are good for a first timer but could be better; now I’ve got motivation to keep training so I can improve for the next one (whenever that might be).  I kind of made the mistake of thinking I’d do this challenge in 2025 then check that box off my bucket list with no desire to do another; as it turns out, I’m incredibly annoyed that I didn’t try for another slot in the Disneyland Half Marathon this coming January, especially because it is likely to be the last race out there until their theme park expansion is complete.

Lesson learned.

I asked my wife as we were wrapping up the weekend if either of us had even vaguely imagined we’d be participating in runDisney events when we first visited the parks as a couple two-plus decades ago; she had a bit more of an inkling that she might want to do one, mostly because she is the original runner in our family and already knew about what Disney offered.  These days, any planned trip to Florida revolves around the race calendar and whether we can swing the expense to do that plus visit the parks.  I’m not sure even if I had managed to snag a spot in the Disneyland Half next year, we could’ve made the economics work to get back to Orlando, honestly.  And that’s fine – there are plenty of amazing opportunities here in Tucson and out where our friends live in California to rack up some miles, so I’m not worried about continuing this journey.  

As you might imagine, I did some sleuthing while I was wandering across Walt Disney World; with Vasily’s wedding coming up in the next book, I’ve been thinking (and, frankly, overthinking) exactly how that will all come together.  Planning this blessed event is stressing me out almost as much as my own wedding did, which probably sounds weird until you consider just how real these characters are to me.  Vas took a long, winding road to the love of his life and it just feels right that I make it as perfect as I can.  Having it take place there at Disney feels perfect given his love of the place, but I will be brutally frank here for a moment: some of the more recent legislative initiatives aimed directly at the LGTBQ+ community in Florida have given me great pause.  

Do I truly want to feature a location that on its face appears hostile to people like Vasily and Alejandro?  That’s a tough question to grapple with if I want to be honest in how Vas would react to such a situation.  I know Disney ultimately pushed back on what Florida was doing, though they wound up paying a heavy price for doing so; they are not the villains in this particular chapter of history.  And I am also well aware that the Florida legislature does not speak for all Floridians – especially those who live in the densely populated areas in and around Orlando.  I know this is a world of my creation, but I do have rules and one of them is trying to be as realistic as possible in how I portray current events; while I made a conscious decision to ignore COVID, I’ve not shied away from other aspects of what has happened in this country over the last eight years and how that affects both Sean and Vasily.  

I think where I have landed is to keep the wedding at WDW as planned; there will be ramifications to that, of course, which will be integral to the story I’ve begun to plot out.  My work on that novel won’t begin until I’ve completed work on the current Sean Colbeth manuscript, so some details are likely to change a bit before I get there.  I’m still planning on [redacted] to take place when [redacted], though I’ve not quite decided how that might take place.*   That assumes, of course, that I don’t sidetrack myself with the sequel to Reflection in the Shadows; I’ve got a fair amount of work into that already, but set it aside so I could use my traditional November writing window for Sean.

At least, that’s the plan.

* yes, I intentionally blanked out spoilers.