A Little History

I always sort of assume that the readers of this blog know me and know about my job, but lately there have been a few new people stopping by so I thought I might take this post to introduce a little about myself and my work. If you already know it, feel free to skip. I'll try to be brief.

I was born in 1958 and grew up on a farm in Arkansas. I got a bachelor's degree in psychology from Arkansas Tech University, then an MA and PhD in psych from the University of Arkansas. I started teaching at Xavier University of Louisiana, in New Orleans, in 1986 and have been there ever since. This is my 32 or 33 year. It's a lot anyway. I teach experimental psychology courses such as Physiological Psychology, Psychology of Learning, Evolutionary Psychology, and Writing in Psychology.

For the last ten years or so I've been able to take summers off to write and pretty much all of my book publications have come in that time period. I do write during the school year but I am seldom able to complete long projects during that time. My job keeps me pretty busy. In addition to teaching, I'm also chair of the Xavier University IRB, which processes any research project carried out on campus that involves human participants. It is a "very" busy committee. 

I also tend to blog less when school is in session, so you may note a slow down in my blog posts and visits over the next few weeks. Faculty meetings and registration took place last week, and classes start today. I came in very early to get all my stuff ready for class so that's why I have a few minutes to blog this morning. 

Anyway, enough about that. I'm off to try and visit some blogs before the first students start coming in. 

Summer's Passing

Don't know how so much of the summer got away from me. Or actually, I guess I do know. Summer started with a lot of issues and I didn't get much writing done, but then around mid-June things calmed down and I started to surge on the writing. For almost five weeks I was able to write pretty much every day and my output surged from 4 to 5 hundred word a day to a high of over 2000 a day. It settled down to at least a thousand a day and I added about 25,000 words to Gods of Talera.

No good streak continues in my world, though. Toward the middle of July, Lana's car completely failed and we had to get another one. Then our plumbing stopped up and we were without flushing toilets and showers for about a week. Around the same time the AC started giving us trouble. Lana had a minor surgery during this time, then had to have a major one at the start of August. Most of three weeks went up in flames as far as writing goes.

And when I started to lift my head again after all that, well, it was time to start worrying about school. Unfortunately, my summer vacation from the IRB committee that I serve as chair of ended early and I'm back in the saddle there. Feeling really down about all this stuff, I've taken the last two days off and just played Skyrim.

For all  of my adult life I've worked an academic job. During the school year I rob my leisure time to write. Whenever I've had breaks, at Christmas, or during the summers these last ten years, I've converted my normal working hours into writing. Can't say I see a whole lot of accomplishment from all that. I've got some books out, some stories. I sell a few here and there but never see any real growth in sales.  Writing has certainly not been able to replace the money I'd make if I taught summer school.

I didn't really start off this post meaning to whine, but I guess I have. I figure for the next couple of years I'll just go back to teaching in the summer. Maybe I'll start taking some long breaks from writing. By now it's become at least partly a habit, though. Since the main reason I started this blog was because of the writing, I may cut back on posting even more as well. I've been banging my head against a wall for a lot of years now. The wall's still there. My head hurts.

----
----

Back to School

Today is officially my last of summer break. Faculty meetings start tomorrow, and registration begins Thursday. Classes start on Monday. That means less blogging and visiting blogs. At least for a while until I get a new routine established.

It was a fairly productive summer. I did finish a book, although I'd hoped to do a few short stories too and did not accomplish that. I did sell a few reprints, which is always nice. I also did not get as much reading as I would have liked done, and that is largely due to playing lots of Skyrim when I took breaks from the writing.

Unfortunately, next summer will not be as free. Given an analysis of my sales, I realized that I can't really afford to take entire summers off to write anymore. I'll be teaching at least half of next summer. Just too many costs and not enough going in to the coffers. I hope I can maintain at least half the summer free to focus on writing.

Off to visit blogs now on my last free day. Then I've got errands to run and some preparations to make.

----
----

School and Writing

School has started again and I’ve been swamped. Classes actually don’t begin until Monday but there are many, many things teachers have to do before that first class period.  That’s why I haven’t been visiting blogs for a couple of days. I got around to some this morning since it’s been relatively quiet.  

The Fiction Techniques Freebies are over now. I gave away 255 copies of Fiction Techniques #1: Creating Suspense, and 297 copies of #2: Characters Wanted. Sold 9 copies of #3: The Twist Ending. I did notice that someone bought Write With Fire also. At least, the numbers improved on it for a while. I hope people find the articles useful.  For those of you who checked the “Techniques” articles out, tell me honestly what you thought of the covers.  I know they aren’t highly salient but I wanted to make the connection to the ebook publishing revolution so that’s why I used screen shots. I hope they don’t look too cheesy.

I have been writing since the start of the New Year. Most of this has actually been revision of earlier materials, though I have produced a couple of new flash fictions. In the next month or so I’m going to publish a collection of twisted flash fictions and my working title for that is “Micro Weird: Tiny Tales of the Strange.” After that I will turn my attention back to some short westerns, and then begin work on a longer project. I have at least two long projects in various stages of completion, although who knows where inspiration will take me.

Here’s hoping everyone’s New Year is off to a good start!

------

-----

Updates of Various Kinds

Lana is in quite a bit of pain and discomfort after her surgery. She's having trouble sleeping for more than a couple of hours at a time. Her throat gets sore when she sleeps as well, from the tube used during surgery, no doubt. All of this is standard and to be expected, and much what she experienced with her last shoulder surgery. I hope she will get stronger every day now.

I will be at home with Lana for another week or so, but our school starts back on January 4, this year, which seems awfully early. I had hoped to get a lot accomplished over the break but it doesn't look good at the moment. However, Days of Beer is pretty much finished and I've been working on the cover. It will be up soon.

I checked Blogger this morning and had 220 plus posts in my reader. I did a quick scan through and didn't see anything earth shattering, so I decided I didn't have the strength to do my usual commenting. I'll try to get back to visiting and commenting today.
-----
-----

Back To School, and To The Stars

Well, school is back in session. We had registration on Thursday and Friday. Classes start on Monday . I’ve got a pretty good schedule this year and I’m ready. My class numbers are pretty large so it’ll be a busy grading year. As usual once school starts, I won’t be blogging quite as much or able to visit blogs as regularly. The last couple of blog posts were prescheduled.

A bit of good writing news. To The Stars and Beyond: The Second Borgo Press Book of Science Fiction Stories is out and up on Amazon. Why is it good writing news for me? Because it contains my story, “I Can Spend You,” which is one of my favorites among my own stories. There are also stories by Jacqueline Lichtenberg and Richard Lupoff, along with plenty of other writers. They’re really holding the prices down on this series to try and encourage readers. So far it is only available in print, but I think it’s going to be a kindle book as well. That’s what it says in the “Product Description.”

And now I’m off to make my blogging rounds.
-----
-----