Grades are in.

I turned in all my grades late yesterday evening. There are still a bunch of meetings scheduled for next week. I’m on two late job search committees. There’s graduation and a few lingering research proposals to evaluate. But after May 10 I should be largely free for a couple of months to do my own thing.

I have a lot of writing plans and even though I’ll be officially out of school, I’ll still have to zealously protect my writing time.  Very few respect it. Everyone seems to think that since you’re off of your day job that you won’t mind giving up a morning for this, or an afternoon for that. I do mind. I have a second job. That’s how I treat it. A summer job that I take just as seriously as my other one, even though it doesn’t pay nearly as well.

Although I write a little bit most days all year around, summers and Christmas break are where 75% of my most productive writing gets done. These are the times when books are finished, collections put together, and materials are finalized into what I hope are publishable forms.

Those days are finally coming for me, and it’s time to seize them. 

Grades Done, Etc

Finished my grading and will turn them in today. So now I'll return to blogging. There were so many old posts piled up that I'd never get through them so I'll just pick up commenting again starting today.

This post will be a hodgepodge. First, a quick report on my talk at the library on "The Care and Feeding of Writing Groups." It didn't turn out terribly well. Lana was there, and four members of my writing group, another ex member of the group and her mother, and then "two" people who actually signed up for the presentation. Only one of those was there at the beginning, although she did buy three books after the talk.

I also thought I could have been smoother in my talk, particularly at the beginning. I was a bit discombobulated at the low turnout and it took me a moment to figure out how to basically present an hour presentation to one person. I'll have another chance to do better on Tuesday, when I give the same presentation at another branch of the library.

Second, Wicked Words Quarterly, Issue 3, has just been released. It contains a story by me called "Long Dead Woman in a Black Dress." I've got my contributor's copy but haven't had a chance to read it yet, although the stories sound intriguing.

Third, almost two weeks ago Lana and I spotted a small fire burning in the woods down the road from our house. While Lana called the fire department, I started putting it out. It was burning slowly through the leaf litter so I was able to get the primary flames snuffed. The fire truck arrived and started spraying things down. We left. Later, we drove back by and it was still smoking but we didn't think much about it. But the next day I saw that flames had sprung up again. The fire folks had plowed an area around the fire so it was unlikely to get out, but I was afraid it would catch the trees and then be able to leap the gap. Once again we put it out and then I later poured water on all the smoking places. Unfortunately, the fire seemed to have gotten down into some half buried logs and it continued to smolder and occasionally flare up again for nearly ten days, even though we had one light shower and several heavy dews. A couple more time I poured water on the hot spots, and finally noticed yesterday that it appears to have completely died away finally.  Rather scary how long such a fire can keep smouldering.

Fourth, Adventures of an Arkansawyer is getting some good comments, although only one review has appeared on Amazon so far. I have a few copies here if anyone wants a signed one. I"m asking $9 for the book, same as Amazon, and I'm not sure how much the mailing costs would be but probably not much. Email me if you'd like a signed copy. kainja at hotmail dot com

Hope all has been well with everyone while I've been gone.

----
----

A Few Days Off for Work

Final Grading has hit so I won't be visiting blogs for a bit, probably until Saturday or so. I'm sure everyone will survive.

In the meantime, I leave you with what I think is good news.  The entire Talera series is now out as audiobooks here.  You'll have to search for my name, Charles Allen Gramlich.

When I mentioned this on facebook someone asked me how the experience was and who was the reader. I don't know. The publisher set all this up and I didn't have to do a thing. Being lazy, I'm appreciative of that. Jon Nixon said the books were also available at audible.com UK and that the reader was a good one.

See you all soon.
Charles
----
----

Christmas Break Begins

I finished my grading and turned them in Friday. Then I went to bed and slept for over ten hours Friday night. Saturday I took it pretty easy, although I did some reading on the anthology. Later I watched Terminator: Salvation. I thought it was decent, better than Terminator 3 but not as good as the first two movies.

Today, I dug in on the anthology, reading through the whole thing and making some minor changes here and there. Tomorrow is thinking time. I’ll make the final decision on the order of the stories. After that, a week of intense reading and revising should follow before it’s done. I will be doing a short preface and I believe I’m going to need a few very short intros for individual stories. I need to explain just a bit about the Thal Kyrin tales, and about the humorous pieces. I’m looking forward to really focusing on that work.

In other news, the New Orleans Saints are 13 and 0. They have led the NFL in scoring for the past two years. In fact, they have two of the three highest scoring seasons in NFL history. They have set numerous records this year, and not only team records but NFL records. I never thought I’d be able to say these things about the New Orleans Saints. Never! Ever! You know, I really like rooting for a winning team.

Finally, send some good thoughts our way in the next few days. Lana will be having surgery on her shoulder on Wednesday. I probably won’t be posting for a few days but will let everyone know as soon as I get a chance as to how she’s doing.
-----
-----

Snow Day

I woke up a little after 8:00 Thursday morning to an amazing sight. It was snowing! Literally snowing. Actual flakes instead of the occasional hard pellets of ice that we do get. I’ve lived in southern Louisiana since 1986, and in that time I’ve seen it “snow” twice, which means I saw a few flakes mixed with sleet. But this was an actual snow that continued for hours and ended up laying about three inches of the white fluff on our entire neighborhood. (Some forty miles north of us it snowed eight inches!) I quickly went out and had a walkabout.

Later, I completed my grading and got my final grades turned in. I still have a few student letters of recommendation to do, but otherwise I’m officially finished until January. I have a deadline on an article but I’m hoping to have time for some fiction as well. Maybe I can also get some stuff submitted.

In reading, after taking a well-earned break from doing anything, I finished my night off with Darwin’s God by Cornelius G. Hunter. It was a complete waste of time, and I wish I had those hours back. Hunter bases his “entire” book on the fact that Darwin commented several times in On the Origin of the Species about how God would not have deliberately engineered a world with so much savagery in it and with so many poorly designed structures. Hunter points out, rightly, that this presupposes a view of God as essentially a benevolent, merciful, and competent creator.

After this single point, however, Hunter states the same thing over and over throughout 175 boring pages. His primary addition to this argument is that the very fact that Darwin mentioned God in his book means that evolution is really “entirely” an argument against the positive view of God rather than for evolution. Of course, Darwin made such comments in his book. Any new theory is going to point out how it is different from the prevailing theory.

When he’s not reemphasizing the above point, Hunter is claiming that the evidence for evolution is simply not evidence. He makes this claim over and over…, with no justification whatsoever. He has to know he’s engaging in “baffling with bullshit.”

Finally, though, the worst part of this book is its cowardice. I wondered if Hunter would have the guts to say what lies at the heart of his argument. He didn’t. I wasn’t surprised, since it would have horribly insulted many Christians who probably make up the book’s primary audience. If we follow Hunter’s arguments to their logical conclusion it would mean that God, according to Hunter, is capricious, vicious, and hateful. Hunter’s God is a trickster and a liar, and Hunter should have had the cojones to say so.

And oh, wow, the snow is still here this morning, although it's melting fast. This is unheard of.

Forgive me for not getting around to everyone's blog the past couple of days. I'm off to visit now, although I doubt I'll be able to catch up on all the posts I missed.

OUR CHRISTMAS TREE IS BELOW: LOL.