You no longer need hold your breath. The Pocket Guide update you’ve long been waiting for has arrived.

Sports Fans? Put down your remotes.

Gamblers? Set the cards aside.

Whoremongers? Stop all that mongering.

1. Pocket Guide to the Afterlife is done. D-O-N-E. At least, the first draft is finished. Then my wife has to read it. Then she makes suggestions. Then I take her suggestions very seriously and read it again myself. Then I make a few more edits to it. Then I send it to my publisher so they can make edits and suggestions and send it back to me.

But anyway, it’s done.

2. Pocket Guide to Sainthood is in the edits-suggested-by-the-publisher stage. The good news is that they like it. A lot. There is no bad news. Just a few edits to make — make this funnier, state this better, quit beginning so many sentences with “And…” — and then I’ll probably read through it one more time. Just for kicks. Then we’ll move out of the draft stage and into another editing stage.

This book-writing thing involves more stages than the Tour de France.

3. I’ve sold, signed, and shipped 202 copies of Pocket Guide to the Bible since making it available here. That means, out of my original 9053, I’ve only got 8851 to go! Look how optimistic I am as I type these exclamation marks! Yay!

Have you bought a copy or two for yourself? At these prices, you can buy a bunch, then leave one for the tip every time you go out to eat. Or you can rip the covers off and wallpaper your bathroom with them, like I used to do with Sports Illustrated magazine covers in the late 80s. Or you can put them in a blender, just to see what happens.