Oh, hello there. I didn’t see you come in. Please, take a seat and join me for a while. Apologies for the dust, I’m still freshening things up. No, no, take the good chair. It’s fine.

Well, let’s get caught up, shall we?

I started the ranty writing blog about sixteen years ago. I was going to bore you with the exact how and why, but its not really important, is it? I mean, some of you know, but I’m betting overall most of you don’t really care. No, it’s okay, I get it. To paraphrase Patton Oswalt, I don’t need to know where the stuff I like comes from.

Anyway, I’ve been offering tips and advice for a while now. Just tips and advice, because ultimately writing is an art and we all approach art in our own ways for our own projects. That’s my golden rule for this stuff. What works for me probably won’t work for you and it definitely won’t work for him. A huge, often overlooked part of being an artist is finding the tools that work best for you. Which often means figuring out the ones that don’t work for you.

And I’ve found I like blathering on about this stuff. It helps you with stuff, and every now and then it helps me with stuff, too. And I like helping where I can. Here, at the Writers Coffeehouse, at cons. Remember cons? Good times…

“Well, hang on there,” says RealWriter677147, their voice rising up from the depths of the internet. “If you like helping other writers so much, where’ve you been for the past year?”

Fair point.

After lockdown more or less puttered out (but our covid crisis continued), I was just feeling… beat. 2020 was a grueling year—personally, creatively, nationally. 2021 was marginally better, but only in the sense of breaking both thumbs not feeling that bad after you’d already broken both knees. Rolling into 2022 I was just… beat. Exhausted. I’d hit the point where it was hard to care about a lot of stuff, but I was just pushing ahead and doing it anyway. Which just made me more fatigued, and then we were in one of those vicious circles you hear about.

So I took a break. A long break. And kind of looked at a couple things and how I’d been approaching them.

And well, all this (he said gesturing around) was one of the things I wanted to fix. I’d gotten spread out a lot over the past decade and a half on the internet. We had the ranty blog, sure. But we also had the Lovecraft Zombie Almanac, which was me sort of parking my own name on blogspot in a just-in-case way. And there were a bunch of different social media accounts. Plus a personal website Penguin Random House had created for me years ago when they discovered I owned my domain-name but had never done anything with it. So I asked around and somebody recommended a designer who could pull all this together under one umbrella, so to speak.

It felt weird to start posting again when everything would be moving to another website in a month or two, so I held off for a little longer. And then certain people with more money than sense decided to get into the social media game and well… that knocked things around a bit, too. I enjoy doing this, yes, but I won’t lie to you– there is a business aspect for me as well. I’m not planting subliminal messages for you to buy my books (probably), but it definitely helps to make sure people remember I’m still alive, y’know? So, his Muskiness made me rethink a few things. I was fortunate to have a patient web designer who didn’t mind my swings between complete indecision and almost obsessive focus. And then it was the holidays and, look, everybody’s got lives and loved ones.

And then holy crap it’s been like a year since I really posted anything here. It’s time to get back to it, right? Let’s go!

Well, first…

I may be doing a few new things here. I also started a newsletter in this downtime, but it’s through Substack and… jeeeez, speaking of people with more money than sense, right? I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to convince myself this is a good thing. Either way, I’d already decided I’m going to also post the newsletter here on the ranty blog. So once a month you’ll get a general update about what I’m working on, where different projects are at, and also just some quick updates on other things of interest like books, movies, toys, and so on.

Also, you may notice some little hiccups here and there throughout the blog. The designer did an amazing job bringing everything over and keeping 95% of the links and formatting intact. But the truth is, at this point we’ve got some posts that are old Word docs which were cut and pasted into Blogspot’s editor which were then ported over to this system. There’s some rough patches out there and I’ll try to clean them up as I stumble across them.

Oh, and last thing. I won’t be taking down those Blogspot blogs. I won’t be adding to them, but I’ll probably just lock the comments and direct people here. Point is, if in the past you linked to a post for some reason, you won’t lose that. But if you want to update it to here… that’d be cool.

I’ve got a few things on deck for upcoming topics, but I’m always up for suggestions. Maybe something specific you were looking for help with or just wanted a few nudges in the right direction. Let me know in the comments down below.

Speaking of which, next time I’d like to talk about the things we talk about.

Until then, go write.

And thanks for checking out the new place.

And now, one of those quick commemorative posts! Yeah, I know I owe you all a month or so of real posts. I haven’t forgotten. Sorry this has continued to be shoved down the priority list.

Did you know it was ten years ago today that Crypticon 2012 opened in Seattle?

Yeah, I know Crypticon 2022 just ended yesterday. Calendars are funny.

Did you also know I also released a new book at said Crypticon?

The year before I‘d pitched my publisher a zombies on the moon story, but he’d just bought a zombies in space book and didn’t want to do two right on top of each other. So I pitched this other half-formed mystery/ sci-fi/ horror idea I’d been kicking around. He said sure, go for it. I wrote it, he read it, told me it was one of his favorite things he ever seen. He absolutely loved it.

He then also warned me that every book he’d ever picked up that he absolutely, completely loved had bombed. Sooooooo… I should be prepared.

It was supposed to come out in June of 2012, but as a surprise the publisher got twenty copies (maaaybe twenty four???) printed up for Crypticon, where a bunch of the press’s authors were going to be (including Craig diLouie, Jessica Meigs, Timothy Long, Eloise Knapp, and more)

I gave one of those first copies to Kelly Young of Strange Aeons Magazine (and podcast) who was also at Crypticon because I was pretty sure he’d like it. Sold all of them that weekend (except for one I kept for myself). And then the book came out on Amazon and Audible (let’s throw some more thanks to Ray Porter) and, much to everyone’s surprise—me more than anyone else—it turned out to be somewhat popular. So in so many ways this is also the ten year anniversary of when my life turned around, I clawed my way out of poverty, and realized I could make a living telling weird little stories.

Happy tenth birthday to ~14~ , my weird little novel that could. And so many, many thanks to all of you who found it, told some friends about it, and wrote kind reviews about it.

Hey. Interesting week, huh?

First off, many thanks to all of you for your patience. Probably looks dumb as hell, guy who’s got his dream job complaining about being burned out. But the truth is, even a dream job is still a job. And I think for all of us, trying to do your job for the past two years has just been brutal. And it all finally caught up with me. I guess the one big difference is I’m in the very fortunate position of just being able to throw my hands up and say “I’m done” for a week or three.

And it’s helped immensely. I feel rested for the first time in months (almost since before Halloween, really). The new book is back on track. I even think I’ve got a handle on how to deal with the disconnect between my new word processing program (say hello, LibreOffice Writer) and the blog site here. Yes, you may have noticed some odd formatting over the past half-dozen or so posts.

So again, thanks to all of you for your patience.

Anyway… I know I promised to talk about languages next time I put up something new, but I figured it’s probably worth mentioning that big potential shift coming up in the internet. You know. That guy. The one with so much money he literally doesn’t know what to do with it, so he just keeps making questionable choices and never suffering any repercussions. Will things go forward? Will they collapse? Will he get bored and sort of wander off like he’s done for so many other loudly proclaimed offers and deals?

Who knows.

No, seriously. I think there’s good reason to be worried if a guy like that ended up in charge of a major worldwide communication system. He has an extreme “rich white man/ never dealt with a real problem in my life” view of the world. I also think… well, like I mentioned above, he does have a real follow-through problem. I’d say it’s 50-50 at best that this sale even happens. Seriously.

It’s an odd bit of synchronicity that just as I’m coming back from a break on this particular platform, as my fellow youths like to say, and there’s a potential upset at the other big one I spend a lot of time at. Makes you think, as my fellow olds often say. About social media and the role it plays in our lives and our careers.

For a few months now I’ve been looking at this site (which is still here on Blogspot, fer cripes sake) and thinking I should really migrate it over to my website and have everything contained there. One thing this past week’s highlighted is how fragile things can be on the internet. One buyout, one new executive who doesn’t like that balance sheet, and everything can change in minutes. Like, actual minutes.

I also know one reason I’ve been dragging my feet on doing it is because I’ll lose all the links in these posts. Bam, all that interconnectedness and easy reference gone. I could rebuild it, but it’d take time. A lot of time. And I am, y’know, working on other things…

All that said, I’m probably going to stay on Twitter for the foreseeable future. We’ll have to see how it goes there over the next few months. If you’re so interested, there’s also Instagram, which is mostly toys and cats, yeah, but some book stuff too. With all this going on, I set up an account on Counter.Social just because a few folks I know were over there and I figured it might not be a bad thing to claim my name there, so to speak. And someone reminded me I had a Mastodon account I hadn’t used in a while, so I’ve dusted that off and made sure the engine still runs. If you’re on any of these sites, please come find me and listen to my daily prattling. If nothing else, you’ll know when this site gets updated.

And please do keep an eye out here. I’ve got a few cool things planned out for the month of May. I think they’re cool, anyway. That foreign language post, talkin’ about three act structure a bit, and maybe a rambly birthday post or two, as I’ve done once or thrice in the past.

So we’ve all got that to look forward to.

Until then, go write.

Oh, hey there.

 
So, if you’re one of the hundred or two regular readers of this space, you may notice this past year’s been a little… sparse. Not quite the standard level of output for this blog. Normally by this point in the year I’d’ve made at least a dozen posts, and I think this one makes seven so far for 2022.

It’s not for lack of topics. I’ve got two or three on deck, plus a nice question about foreign languages someone asked in the comments a while back (thanks, Oliver!). And I’m sure I’d end up with one or two more by the time all those are done. Saturday geekery usually spawns a good one every other week or so.

Truth be told… I’ve just been fried. Since 2022 started I’ve traveled for the first time in two years. I’ve been reading books for blurbs. I’ve been trying to work on my new novel and also the novel after that and a pair of short stories for different anthologies. There were a few vet visits (cats are all fine, no worries) and a new kitten who can be VERY loud sometimes (often in the middle of the night). Taxes are coming up and I still have a ton of work to do to get those even semi-organized. And of course, I had a new book come out—The Broken Room—which is a whole big thing in itself. Many thanks to those of you who may have read it and left a kind review someplace.

And, yeah, I know a lot of this is just what a pro writer’s supposed to be doing. Juggling stuff and scheduling time and making it all work. I’ve been doing it for many years now. But these past few months—since the holidays, really—I’ve just been friggin’ burnt. And like a lot of folks who hit this state, I’ve been letting one or two things slide. Not intentionally. It just sort of… happened. And this blog was one of the easiest things for it to happen with because…

Well, let’s be honest. This has never been a major stop for the general writing community. I really, truly appreciate all of you who’ve found your way here over the years, but I also see the numbers and I know this has never been a super popular spot. I’ve had plenty of off-the-cuff tweets that get far more visibility and interaction than posts I’ve spent multiple days working on. I enjoy doing this, but if something was going to slide it was bound to be the thing that feels like it’s got the lowest work/return ratio.

So I’m going to try to take a little time, maybe the next two or three weeks, and just try to get myself back to a place where I can get all those balls back up in the air and keep them there. I know I can do it. I want to do it. But one thing most people don’t realize about juggling is that it’s a serious arm workout. And you can only do any workout for so long before you either collapse or start getting kind of distorted.

And, hey, speaking of all this…

This weekend I’m going to be at WonderCon in Anaheim. I’m hosting the Writer’s Coffeehouse on Sunday (11-1:00) where I’ll be talking about publishing, answering questions, and trying hard to be educational and entertaining. If you happen to be there, please stop by and say hi.

Next time… we will talk about languages. I promise. And I’ll make sue you all know when it’s up.

Until then… go write.