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. 

What I Learned from a Month off Facebook

So, I spent a month off facebook. Here’s what I learned.

1. I didn’t much miss it on an emotional level. Quite a few times in the first few days I automatically reached for FB to post some comment or update. That went away pretty quickly.

2. I generally felt more relaxed and didn’t miss the drama that is often present on FB. A big plus.

3. I got more writing and reading done, and watched more TV. However, the increase in writing and reading wasn’t anything astronomical. It was substantive, though, and was the best part of being off FB.

4. Sales of my self published items took a nose dive. I sold exactly one thing during the time I was off FB. Generally, I sell more than that. I have no idea about how it might have affected sales of my Wildside and other publisher released books. A big negative.

5. Although I could have called family members and friends, I didn’t make a substantial increase in this. I did some and that was pleasant, and it’s something I hope to continue. However, I still end up wasting plenty of time, just in other ways.

6. I missed talking about books and writing on FB. This was actually most of what I did when I was on it, and I enjoyed it. A negative.

7. I missed some regular interactions with folks that I was used to seeing on FB. A negative.

8. I found that many, many publishers and contests and other writing related projects make FB their main platform and this was a big negative for me. I couldn’t access guidelines and quite a few other sources of writing information that might have been important for me. Most of this is marketing and that in itself can cause problems for production. But still, not having ready access to this material cost me potential markets. One call for submissions that I missed was definitely something I would have submitted to, and a place where I’ve sold stuff before. This was the biggest issue for me.

9. I got back into blogging and did more of that and found that a positive. I did not necessarily have to give up FB to do this, though. I could have simply shifted the time spent on these various activities around.

For these reason, with the negatives outweighing the positives, I’m going to renew my facebook profile. I’ll see if I’ve lost a step there, and let you know. However, I want to spend less time there and try to avoid leaping on and off it a dozen times a day. If I can do that, I can maintain some of the good things of being away from FB while keeping access to other things that I like.

So, see you on facebook within the next few days.

Picking up on the Blog Again

Since my summer has begun, I'm hoping to pick up a bit on this blog, which I've neglected for quite a while. As per my usual, it'll mostly have to do with writing and reading, with occasional asides into whatever strikes my fancy.

On the writing front, I have a western novella about 3/4s done called "The Scarred One." Had to put it on hold during the school year, but now I'll try to get untracked on it. I've got quite a few completed stories that I need to submit, including two about the sword & sorcery character of Krieg. And I'm still considering self publishing a set of horror stories based on my dreams. I have about a dozen of those finished.

I'm working on a vampire story right now that I'm enjoying, and have opening scenes on several other tales that I don't know what to do with. Lately I've been working on a lot of poetry, partially because it takes less time and I can squeeze out a few moments from work here and there to commit poem-icide. Several of my poems appear in the latest issue of The Horror Zine. Thanks to Jeani Rector.

So, it is with good intentions that I post this blog. Let's see if that holds up through the next few weeks!

Blogging and Days of Beer

I used to post every day, then every other day, then about every third day. Now it seems lucky if I get a post in a week. It's not that I don't enjoy blogging, but so many things consume my interest these days and I've also been working quite a lot on fiction. When I'm writing nonfiction, it lends itself well to blogging, but fiction tends to take me away from it. Not sure why that is. Below is a little piece of nonfiction for you, a small snippet from Days of Beer, my memoir if you will. (It's edited slightly to fit with this post.)

One day, when my son, Joshua, was about seven or eight years old, I opened a bottle of St. Pauli Girl in his presence. St. Pauli Girl is a German beer of exquisite bitterness. Josh, who always wanted to drink whatever I was drinking, naturally asked for a sip. Where before I had always refused to let him drink any beer, I now encouraged him to take a swig, figuring one swig would be enough forever. Holding the bottle in both small hands, he lifted it to his mouth and took a swallow.

The minute that bitterness hit his tongue, Josh’s eyes squinched shut and his face screwed up with a look of shock and dismay. He immediately tried to “chew” the taste back out of his mouth, but St. Pauli Girl is not a lady to be forgotten so easily. I soon took pity on him and gave him a drink of milk to cleanse his palate. He never asked to taste my beer again.

Several months later, Josh and I were at a quick stop store and I saw they had Mountain Dew in the original green bottles, the one with the hillbilly on it holding a jug of moonshine, for which Mountain Dew is named. I bought a bottle for nostalgia sake and offered Josh a sip. At first, he refused. I encouraged him. I could see him looking at me with a speculative light in his eyes; no doubt he was remembering the last time he’d trusted his father’s offer of a drink. But he finally agreed to a tentative sip, and immediately his eyes lit up.
“I like that beer,” he said with a smile.

(BTW, Ty Johnston has a review of Micro Weird up on his blog (http://tyjohnston.blogspot.com/2013/04/books-read-in-2013-no-19-micro-weird.html), and Randy Johnson mentions it on his (http://randall120.wordpress.com/2013/04/01/new-in-the-house-112/), as well as having reviewed it on Amazon.  Thanks, guys!) 

For Reasons Unknown

For reasons unknown, my blog suddenly disappeared yesterday. In fact, I found myself persona non grata with Google so that I couldn't log in to my gmail account or anything else powered by Google. That includes Blogger. I sent an email to their contact and access was restored sometime after midnight last night. I don't know why but I'm glad everything is back with no problems.

I'll have a big announcement, for me anyway, coming up on Tuesday.

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Blogging into the New Year

Something’s got to give. At least a little. I enjoy visiting and commenting on blogs and there’s a tremendous amount of good writing and good material out there. I’ve discovered lots of wonderful writers and thinkers in the blogosphere. But my Google Reader is feeding me close to a hundred posts a day and I’ve been finding myself spending at least an hour a day, and often more, in visiting blogs and commenting. I’ve just got to cut back on some of that in 2010. For my sanity and for my own writing.

I’m not quitting. You’ll still see me around almost as much. But I’m going to try a couple of things and see if it helps. First, I’m going to start taking off blogging on the weekends, Saturday and Sunday. And on holidays. That’s when I can get some back to back hours in on my own writing. (And I've got a couple of major projects I'd like to finish this year.) When I come back on Mondays, however, I probably won’t be able to catch up on everything that has passed and will have to be pretty selective.

Second, I know a lot of folks put up multiple posts a day. A lot of times this is very good material, but I’m going to force myself to only comment on one post a day. I want to make sure I get around to as many different folks as possible. Third, I’m just going to be more conservative in my commenting. I like touching bases with everyone every day, but I can tell I’m not going to be able to keep that up much longer. And sometimes posts are mostly informational and don’t really need my comments. Don’t think this doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate all your efforts.

As for my own posting, I’m probably going to continue posting only every other day or every third day, and I hope in 2010 to get back to posting more substantive material. If I cut back on other aspects of blogging I should have more time to write quality posts myself. I feel like I fell off a bit on that toward the end of last year.

So here’s looking forward to another great year of blogging. Happy 2010!
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I'm a Winner

How cool is this! I just won a $25.00 gift certificate over at the Book Roast for a t-shirt slogan idea I posted. There were some great entries so I’m amazed that I won. My entry was: “Reading: It’s not just for the bathroom anymore.” Thanks very much to Moonrat for selecting me, and to Chris Eldin for organizing these roasts, which must be a lot of work. I’ve already been poking around at Amazon to see what I want. Well, who am I kidding, I really kind of want them all. But I’m looking forward to narrowing my selection down.

As for the local conditions, we’ve had a lot of wind yesterday and today due to Hurricane Ike passing underneath us, but nothing serious has happened. But this is a big storm so I hope all our friends in Texas are bracing for impact or getting the hell out, depending on where they live.

In writing news, I’m working right now on the update for the Neuropsychological article and it’s getting close to done. I still have two original pieces to do, though, which will take longer, and I’m going to have to cut back on blogging a bit. This morning I had 50 new posts on Google Reader, then 18 more new ones after lunch, and 9 more just a few minutes ago. There is so much great stuff going on in the blog world, like the Book Roast, Bernardl’s online novel, the interviews that Shauna Roberts’ runs, and the funny cartoons that folks like Laughingwolf post, but I’m pretty close to saturation point at the moment. I’ll continue visiting blogs but won’t be posting comments as frequently. The writing just has to come first.

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New Links

I've put up a few new links that I thought I might say a bit about. The first one on my link list to the right is to "Lana's Web Page". Lana is my girlfriend, a talented artist, writer, and all around wonderful person who also has a bit of an acerbic wit. If you doubt that, check out her new blog, which is called "I'm surrounded by Idiots." (Most of the time she doesn't mean me.)

The next link is to REHupa, which stands for Robert E. Howard United Press Association, a group of psychos, nerds, dinks, and scholars of which I'm a member. (I won't tell you which category I fall into, although it may be more than one.) These guys have a lot of fun, and an occassionally bloody war, discussing Robert Howard and his works. There you'll also find links to such blogs as Fire and Sword, by Dave Hardy, who occassionally visits "Razored Zen," The Cimmerian, which I believe was the first ever blog dedicated solely to Howard, and The Two-Gun Raconteur, a journal that publishes stuff by and about Howard.

Third, I've added a link to The Dark Man, a scholarly journal of Howard studies, of which I'm an Assistant Editor.

Let Me Wake From This Nightmare

Tomorrow! Work! I return to...work!!!!! How can such evil be allowed to stalk this great land of the free? Why can't our government declare a "War on Work?" How could such a sensitive, poetic soul as myself be required to...labor for my bread? What part of lazy don't my employers understand?

Just to point out, returning to work may mean I won't be posting comments as frequently as I've been doing. I'll still keep up my posting here but may not be able to visit and comment as frequently on all the great blogs that I've found over the past few weeks. (Some folks are saying, "Thank...a deity of some sort.")

And now, since this is supposed to be a writing/reading related blog, let's see: My highest recommended novels for 2006 (although not necessarily written in 06) were: The Swords of Night and Day by David Gemmell, The Road by Cormac McCarthy, and Drive by James Sallis. The best book on writing that I read in 2006 was Orson Scott Card's Characters and Viewpoint, although Kate Wilhelm's Storyteller earns an honorable mention. My favorite non-fiction book was Why People Believe Weird Things by Michael Shermer, but I also greatly enjoyed Carl Zimmer’s Parasite Rex and Jonathan Weiner’s The Beak of the Finch. That’s a lot of good reading for 06. I guess it was a pretty good year after all.

A Return to your Regularly Scheduled Blog

I'm going to put RZ E NEWS on the shelf for a bit and return to more serious commentary. It's pretty hard for me to maintain the illusion of comedy anyway, seeing as how I was born without a sense of humor.

Sidney Williams, Stewart Sternberg, and Wayne Allen Sallee have all posted on the issue of "Why We Blog" lately, and you can find commentary on those posts at their website. Stewart has pointed out that the key to increasing your blog traffic is to "have something interesting to say." One point about that, though, is that "interesting" exists more in the reader than in the blogger. Obviously, to many people, Paris Hilton is an absolutley fascinating person. I don't feel the same way, and I'm not going to have much or anything to say about such celebrities. I remind myself, however, that I'm not likely to sell my writing to "most" of the people who find Paris fascinating. My potential audience is different and I have to find and post here that which interests "them."

In related news, C. S. Harris is posting over on her site a series about how she plots, especially related to her current historical mystery series. I found the first entry quite informative so you folks interested in plotting might check it out.