Tag Archives: web log

Now that I’m on my own

A Season of Kings, Books, Memoirs, Self-Publishing, Social Networking, Tales of Reagul, Writing, , , , , , , ,
This was once me, at West Point. Boy, have I sure come a long way since then
This was once me, at West Point. Boy, have I sure come a long way since then

The last day of work for me was on Tuesday, and it was one of those days that really didn’t have a lot going on. I came in expecting to be given grunt work to do most of the day, but the senior boss decided that I would have my exit interview at 11:30 AM, and then I was finished with the job as of noon. Still got paid for the entire day (or so they say), and then I was kind of on my own from there. I forgot to pick up some medication at the pharmacy at work because I was in such a hurry to leave, so I’ll probably have to wander back there this weekend and do the pick up of that stuff.

So, I’m now in the process of putting together my writing projects and pushing forward on those. I completed and published my novella, The Beast of Begmire, and I’m trying to see about getting it listed for free on most e-book sites. I also put it up on Wattpad this evening, so it should be available for anyone to read free there.

My next project will be to complete A Season of Kings, and during that project I’m still working on completing the first book of the series I’m writing with Marie. Hopefully, we can get that one moving forward, as I seem to have a lot more hope for that series than any of the fantasy ones I’m writing.

Money is going to be tight, mainly because of the way Spectrum Health completes the quitting process. I can’t ask for my payout money from my retirement until the last paycheck comes through from SH, and unfortunately the way they work it out, it will probably be about a month before the last “paycheck” comes through, and THEN I’m allowed to put in the paperwork for that money. Which means February might be a bit crappy when it comes to paying my bills, and unfortunately I’m not really sure what the solution to that is going to be. If it’s not one thing, it’s another….

Another project I’ve been outlining lately is one that I had on a back burner for many years now, and that’s my Return to Camelot series. Every time I write a specific novel, I find myself getting tons and tons of ideas, dialogue, and even scenes from the next novel I’ll be writing after the ones I’m currently working on. For some reason, Return to Camelot has been the one that’s been building momentum lately. All I can do is write down the ideas and hope that I can get to the actual writing soon. My working titles for that series are:

1. The Once and Future King

2. Return to Camelot

3. Le Morte D’Arthur

They’re not massively original, but they’re working titles for now, and they seem to push the ideas of what exists within each volume. I’m kind of looking forward to writing that series, as I wrote the first couple of chapters years ago and still refer to those chapters from time to time because they were so very good. Yes, a writer can admire his own work from time to time. You wouldn’t believe how critical I am of practically everything else that comes through my word processor.

For some reason, every night I seem to be dreaming about work (the old job). I keep dreaming how someone is telling me I have to do something and it must be done on a deadline that has already passed. And then an inner voice tells me, hey, you don’t work here any more, and I kind of toss and turn through that. I guess the subconscious does that to you when you’ve been living and breathing a job for so long, especially one that was becoming really good at developing arbitrary deadlines and then sitting on the results for weeks while new deadlines are thrown at you for new work that will then be sat on as soon as it met its completion. Anyway.

So, that’s kind of where things are right now. And as so few people tend to read my blog, aside from the spider sites in China that seem to access my page hundreds of times a day, it would be nice to hear from people who are actually reading it. Otherwise, I might just have to discontinue it, as it’s turning very much into a diary where I’m the only one who is really reading it.

Am I Wasting My Time With This Blog (does anyone even read it)?

Computer Games, Memoirs, Relationships, Social Networking, Writing, , , , , ,

For some time now, I’ve been wondering how many people actually read my blog, if any. I mean, I know a few people read it, and those are mainly my close friends. But other than a half dozen, I’m not sure what I’m doing here really equates to a useful use of my time. Considering I’ve been doing this blog for years now, one would think that it would have received a bit better of a reception than absolutely little to none.

Strangely enough, I get lots of responses to my posts. But they’re all from spammers. And I mean A LOT of responses from spammers who are basically trying to sell their stuff, attempt to steal my ID, or whatever else they’re doing when they attempt to get people to click on their useless links.

But not so many people. Every now and then I’ll get a 1/10 vote on an old post of mine, where someone generally didn’t understand I was being ironic (or sarcastic) and then thinks that when I argue that Iran is doing good things by hurting women again, I’m being sarcastic, in that I don’t support them in their actions. Instead of any response from anyone, I’ll get someone who gives me a 1/10, a thumbs down, or a rant about how men like me are keeping women in the Middle Ages of sexual politics, meaning they didn’t understand the article, or didn’t read far enough into it to care enough to try to understand it. That gets really frustrating when that kind of stuff ends up being the only responses you tend to get.

This blog was designed as a place for a political scientist/communications person who sees the world through really bizarre lenses (including an anarchist one as well) to talk about all sorts of issues, ranging from politics, to game design (I used to work as a game designer years ago), to academics (I have more degrees than I can count, which is really an appeal to our horrible educational system that didn’t teach me to count very well), to humor, to my comic strip The Adventures of Stickman and the Unemployed Legospaceman (which you can access from the links on this page), to technology, to my unusual dating history (in which I end up having to fear almost every woman I’ve ever dated), to pretty much anything else. Yet, I don’t think this blog gets out to anyone. Or to very few.

I’ve tried all sorts of “have your blog seen by millions” techniques, but I’ve mainly failed. No one but spammers seems to know I exist. If others are seeing it, they’re being very quiet, like that strange person who sneaks into my house and steals all of my left socks.

The blog was originally a showcase for my novel writing, but that never seemed to do much either. Years later, and a dozen or so novels later, I’m as popular as someone who has yet to write his or her first word.

So, I’m going to throw this out to you all. If you read it, let me know. If not, I’m probably going to give this a few weeks to make its way into the cobwebs of the web and then close down my blog for good. Why waste time and money on something nobody is enjoying?

30,000 hits and no comments

Writing, , ,

I just noticed for the first time today that my blog now has 30,000 hits. That’s almost as much as a sex site gets in a whole three hours, and 29,732 more than Lindsay Lohan gets when she blogs about integrative calculus, so I found that to be seriously impressive. But what bothers me is that I have no comments. I get a few comments on facebook from time to time, but for some reason this widget doesn’t seem to import them anymore to my blog, which makes it seem like my blog has everything but tumbleweeds turning over and over again.

Yet, I get dozens of spam messages a day. So, somehow the spammers are finding my site and trying to get me to advertise their crap. But real people aren’t reading me. Or at least I can’t tell if they’re reading me because the only actual responses I get are spammers. And I’m convinced they’re not really reading me because when you get messages that hit my spam folder like: “I really like what you’ve done with your site, and I’m going to subscribe to your feed. Now, are you sure you understood Justin Bieber’s argument in his new single properly?”

Maybe I’m just wasting my time with this blog. I really don’t know. I know my stuffed animals read it, but they read everything I put in front of them, so I don’t even have to put it on the net for them to read what I have to write.