Category Archives: real life

Yuletide Souls Fest of Vicksburg

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In one of my rare personal appearances (I’m not reclusive. Just scarce) I’ll be at the Vicksburg, MS, Library this Saturday, December 3rd, as part of the Yuletide Souls Fest of Vicksburg. There will be artists, mystics, and other authors, of course. This is Mississippi. You can’t kick a can without hitting a writer. Just for the record, I blame Bill Faulkner and Miz Eudora equally for that.
If you’re in the area, stop by. There will be books, entertainment, and a raffle to benefit the local chapter of CAP (Child Abuse Prevention).  Last time there were even cookies. No promises, though.

Here’s a link to the Facebook Event Page. If you’re in the area, stop by and say hi.

What Dreams Are Made On

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Had an interesting dream not too long ago. I mean, not like last night, where I dreamed I was delivering a load of tank barrels to a WWII armored division who’d gone off without theirs.  And by “interesting” I mean it was to me, so I’m going to talk about it here.

 I had one of those cliché dreams where you’re going back to school. Though apparently I was going to a private college with communal dorms, and your dorm group bought food as a group and took turns cooking. A little odd and outside my experience, but ok.Then in the middle of the school term I went to Hell. Literally. Not sure why. Don’t remember the death experience in the dream, but I was in Hell, not having a good time. The Devil was being about what you’d expect him to be, punishing people, and once fighting off a challenge from a rival god (not that God. A god).

Then I was back in school, but I wasn’t out of Hell. More like a furlough. See, being in Hell was no excuse for missing your turn cooking, so there I was, fresh out of Hell and trying to make pancakes. Problem was, being in Hell had screwed up my sense of temperature, so I kept burning them. Then back to Hell. Where I found out it was someone ELSE’s turn to be the Devil.

Apparently, we were all taking turns there, too.

Losing My Religion

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I’m going to get a little autobiographical here. Consider yourself warned.

I used to haunt the Post Office nearly every day. That is to say, I would check the PO box dedicated to writing correspondence, submissions, etc., every single day, save only holidays. By any reasonable standard, it was obsessive and overkill.  Considering the usual number of stories I had in circulation and the number of available markets, two, three times a week at most would have been plenty. Of course in my head I knew that at the time, but it didn’t stop me. Obsession and I were old friends. I’d often said that, if I didn’t have obsession, I wouldn’t have any discipline at all. It got the words out, the stories written. Now I actually do check the PO box once or twice a week, but of course these days I’ve switched my obsessive focus to email because that’s where the action is. Most submissions and acceptances and rejections, even contracts are arriving by email, and the Post Office lost its…well, I won’t say “luster.” It was the Post Office. It never had luster. Say rather its focus and attraction for me. Gone now. I do not really miss those daily trips to the Post Office.

Book stores, on the other hand…well, here’s where I start to worry a bit. Continue reading →

In Which I Am a Raving Idjit

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Pardon my silence of the last few days. In addition to some long-delayed DIY projects for the household, I’ve been nursing my poor computer back to health after a serious system crash. Nothing lost but a few games I didn’t need in the first place, though I will have to key in the data from last year’s tax return. Could have been a lot worse.

Of course, I made it worse than it had to be. For the last two days off and on I’ve been trying to track down a really nasty humm/hiss in my PC’s audio playback, with no success. It was  maddening. Drivers up to date, mixer settings apparently correct, digital sound configured…but it was still hissing like a pit of snakes on espresso. Keep in mind, my day job is computer/network support. And I couldn’t even correct what should have been a relatively  minor audio glitch compared to the system crash?

To make a long story short, I’d left the #$@# headset mic on. I wasn’t using it, I never do, but it was taking input in the form of electronic hissing. Nor did I figure it out like a good tech, I just stumbled across it when looking at the mixer settings for umpteenth time.

Gad. Sometimes I think I’ve got a decent handle on things. At other times I think I’m just not all that bright. This is one for the second category. Tomorrow, maybe, I’ll put an actual post together. It could happen.

A Little Knowledge is Dangerous — and Annoying

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I’m a junker. This is not a confession, just a statement of self-evident fact. No, our house is not packed to the rafters with antique garbage (or any other kind). We buy very selectively, and “the hunt is always more fun than the kill,” metaphorically speaking. But that hunt is something Carol and I do for fun, and I was more or less hooked the day I found a Hiroshi Yoshida woodblock print for fifteen bucks, when a comparable one sold at auction for $600+. “Antique” stores, flea markets, whatever. If we find one we have to check it out. This interest branches out into other areas—Woodblock prints, Japanese swords and mountings, and other things I have neither the time nor money to pursue properly. But I’m a writer. I research. It’s almost instinctive. So is learning a little bit about a lot of things, which helps you to know where to dig when more depth is required for a project. Plus, anything that interests me, I have to know more about it. Human nature, that is. Continue reading →