My Mom, Life, Books, Movies and Other Stuff
Originally Posted to Blogger – Monday, December 17, 2007
It’s been some time since I’ve written here. As you may or may not know, I lost my mother at the end of October. It was very unexpected, and the single most difficult and damaging experience of my life. You expect a trauma like that to affect you, but I think ‘how’ is always the big surprise. My family and I are healing, and I appreciate all the help we received during this trying time – particularly from The Armada who, as always, stood by me and propped me up when the weight of it all threatened to overwhelm. I love you all. And no words can describe the unimaginable support provided by my wife and best friend, Wendy. She understands what I’m going through all too well, and it has been her unenviable task of picking up my pieces and gluing them back together when I am struck by the need to fall apart. I hope you all can be so fortunate to have somebody in your life with the capacity to love and give that she possesses.
Read MoreNYC Trip: A Prologue
Originally Posted to Blogger – Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Wendy and I have returned from our adventure to New York City for a stay with the lovely Gene and Mary. I had intended to blog extensively this evening about the trip, but I’m still exhausted from all the travel. For now, I share this photo from the New York Comic Con:
Read MoreRidin’ around with your head on fire
Originally Posted to Blogger – Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Monday afternoon, Big T and I sat through a matinee of “Ghost Rider”, starring Nicholas Cage’s hair piece, Eva Mendes’ cleavage, Sam Elliot’s cowboy getup, Peter Fonda’s pomade and Wes Bentley’s over synthesized voice. Co-starring Bentley’s sideburns, and a handful of actors that had been out of work since “Highlander 3″.
I love comic books. I support comic book movies when I can. Make no mistake, I know that many of them aren’t good – and Ghost Rider certainly falls in that category.
Read MoreUnderground: Week 4 and some change
Originally Posted to Blogger – Sunday, February 04, 2007
My January underground wrapped up this week without a great deal of creative activity. I had a couple of nights of decent productivity, but I’m still having trouble staying awake at the keyboard past 10:00pm.
I have been toying with something new on my lunch breaks at Starbucks. I think it spawned as a result of my reading “The Cthulhu Mythos” by August Derleth, and feeling like I could do better. Derleth was a contemporary of H.P. Lovecraft (kind of the Stan Lee of horror, for the uninitiated), and took up his mythos after Lovecraft died. I’ve owned this story collection for years (I went through a big Cthulhu phase in early college), but just now got around to Derleth’s work. And, no sir, I don’t like it.
Read MoreUnderground: Week 2 & 3
Originally Posted to Blogger – Monday, January 22, 2007
My “underground” month continues, though the last two weeks without the benefit of being on vacation. I’ve learned an important lesson in these 14 days: I am not one of those “write my best stuff at 2:00am” nocturnal writers. I am way more productive in the typical 9-to-5, probably as a side effect of working that for years.
Now that I’m back in my daily work routine, I’ve generally been fitting an hour or two in a night, between 8:00pm and midnight. My productivity has gone way down, which was to be expected, but I’ve been rather caught off guard by my penchant for falling asleep at the keyboard around 10:45. (Cory and Amy will have a laugh at that because, as they know, if casual conversation around the house goes that late, I tend to fall asleep on the couch or, sometimes, the floor.)
Despite all that, I’ve gotten some work done.
Read MoreUnderground: Week One
Originally Posted to Blogger – Monday, January 08, 2007
My week’s vacation from work is over and the first quarter of my January “underground” is done.
Late in ’06, I decided to get my creative projects in gear by taking January and throwing myself headlong into the process, swearing off my social life and cuddling up to my new laptop. I burned a handful of vacation days so that I could take the first week of the month off. My plan was to spend about 2/3 of my time writing and the other third working on my music demo.
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