This Blog Is Dead / Another Blog Migration

My publisher KHP decided give me some of their hosted webspace. So, this blog is dead. I can now be found here. 

Bryan Dietrich's The Monstrance

I've had the pleasure of working with Dietrich in the past, and before that, I've always admired his writing. He can take popular culture and use it as poetic language in ways I haven't seen any other contemporary poet do. Currently, his Frankenstein book The Monstrance (Belfire/Needfire) is making it's way through the HWA Stoker Awards process. I'm going to keep any opinion about the HWA or the Stokers' poetry category to myself, since I have not actively been watching as much the last few years. In short, I'm grossly uniformed and out of date on whether or not the HWA has instituted reforms. Still, it's a great book and well worth looking into. This is a Kindle link.

I Love And Hate The Gym

A lot of my life recently has revolved around religiously going to the gym. That doesn't make me a health nut. In fact, I often try to go when the fitness nerds are often not there. It's not so much of a problem, though, because I go to a place that actively discourages loud manly grunting and weight dropping. It's more of a thing that I realized that I will be turning 39 in like 5 months and if I do not get healthy now than I'm just screwing myself down the line. So, I'm starting to see the gut shrink. The other thing is this: currently, I work at home and tend to be a bit of recluse so going gets me out of the house.

I Know What I Saw

So, as part of the new me always to be in progress, I'm going to get back to doing this blog regularly. That means eventually I'm going to have to clean up the about me section and clearing out the broken links to books that no longer exist. But, let me start with Belfire Press' anthology I Know What I Saw. This started out as a co-editing project between me and Barry Napier. Of course, when things got chaotic with my mortgage thing, I had to withdraw -- he was doing all the work, and I didn't want to be be unfair by taking the credit when he did the heavy lifting.  Still, I have a poem in here riffing on T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufock." (I took the line about mermaids and made into space aliens)

Rock Bottom And Upwards

This is not something I'm going to comment on a lot publicly. My life has been a train wreck the past few years. Depression can not only impact you, but everybody around you. Sleep apnea killed my higher ed career. I lost my mother to cancer. I figured out I had ADHD badly. I lost my home during the housing bubble rupture. It was too much to swallow, and because I couldn't process all of that my wife of nine years became fed up with me being miserable to be around and left me many months ago. For good, too, even though we're still friendly. (The last bit is something I'm definitely not talking about on the internet after this post. We've kept it off Facebook, for instance). Only, I'm done carrying that weight around. I'm just trying to be a happier person one day at a time, and it starts with headphones, music, and going to the gym. Often. Even though I hate the gym. The point is to exercise, eat better, and take herbal supplements for ADHD. In short, to take better care of myself. I can either be a whiner or somebody who actually does something. And that's what I want to be. A doer.

Where have I been?

My wife and I lost our home to the foreclosure/short sell wave sweeping the country. We tried hard to avoid that outcome. Hell, I even returned to Walmart in a bid to get health benefits and a chance to climb the corporate ladder. It didn't work out, and that doesn't remove the stink of failure. My wife and I now live in my father's house. I couldn't save my home. It's the reason why I have not updated this blog at all in the last few months. It's a pride issue, and I failed. Miserably.

UFO Antho Kickstarter Campaign

So, here is the Kickstarter campaign a potential publisher wants, in order to do the UFO poetry anthology Barry Napier and I would very much like to do.

And, for the record, the guy reading the excerpt of one my poems pretty much kills it. It's the first time I've ever heard anybody read one of my poems without me cringing, as a result.

Submission Guidelines are here.