I’ve been justly criticized for rarely blogging. (I’m toying with naming this “The Desultory Blog.”)

I’m from the pre-blogging days of what’s now Big 6 Publishing, a time when writers were usually heard from only through their work and seen only at book signings. It had the languid cyclical pace of a Mesopotamian water culture: the contract came, requested changes were made, the manuscript returned and galleys proofed. Eventually a check and courtesy copies of your opus appeared, all at a lingering magisterial pace. Repeat.

This cloistered creativity was infrequently broken by publisher-paid luncheons with your editor in New York. The quality of the dining venue was a reliable gauge to the degree of marketing support your distantly-forthcoming book would enjoy. I knew I was toast when feted with a gelatinous treat at a toasted tofu stand. (I was right.) Previously we’d gone to Sardi’s.

Yummy Tofu Treat

One could attend gatherings of other writers, which at science fiction conventions, often a bunch of guys sitting around unopened bottles of diet soda, bitching about money and cruising for a fresh agent.

Distress

There’s the notion that authors should only use their blogs to write about writing. But there’s more to life than writing—or should be.

I’ll try to blog more often and not exclusively about writing.  I’ll be posting vignettes about life with my Squire, about whom I’ve long tweeted. (#AleJailBail being a recurring hash tag.)

Squire is my devastatingly sardonic former student. He helps me out now and then:

“The lawnmower’s dead.”

“How long have you had this?”

“Five years.”

“You’ve never changed the sparkplug, have you?”

“The what?”

To Be Continued