Well, here we go again, dear friends. This blog has been inactive since 2013. Why? Would you believe the dog ate my server? No? Be that as it may, I refer to the immortal words of Aerosmith: “I’m baaaaaaack in the saddle again!”
Way back in 1998, I was one of the early guys in the writer club with an active blog and website. It was my first stab at “branding” and a great way to have conversation with readers and share my works in progress. As time went on, I was nudged into social media by my publisher. I was deeply suspicious of the whole thing. But Cindy and I had fun with Twitter and eventually I made my way to Facebook, which lured me away from the blog with its easy come-ons. You know how it is: SO easy to drop in words and pictures, SO instant in response time. You can get likes!! FB became my fractured blog. And my website blog withered from my inattention, filling me with such guilt …
And now here we are at the tail end of the first year of Trumpology. Mixed feelings, yeah: bad and worse. Much of it magnified by the noisy complicated chaos of social media. I missed a place where I could be more thoughtful, play with words and ideas. Coincidentally, we realized it was time to relaunch this site. So under the guidance of the author website wizard Ilsa Brink, Cindy set out to make a clean and modern website. Nice and clean. Nice and 21st century. As if I am not entering my codger era and wish we were sending postcards instead…
New beginnings. As I prepare for the launch of The House of Broken Angels and the epic tour ahead, I thought it would be nice to refurnish this cabin so we could hang out here again. Please visit often, bookmark the site. I have always planned this website as a place of service to my readers, but also as a kind of magazine and two-way conversation (no targeted ads!! No bots!!) In the old days, I even hosted guest writers and wrote a feature we called Immigration Monday. Perhaps those things will return. But the one thing I will bring back is my personal favorite, Writing Church. On random Sundays, I’ll spend the day answering any questions you may have about my writing, about other writers, or about the practice of writing in general. With the new technology, perhaps we’ll even make it a live chat session. Who knows? Lots of new possibilities out there!
Most of my blog, I am sure, will come to you from the road. I am writing now in a dorm room in Sierra Nevada College in Lake Tahoe, listening to David Bowie. Road stories are always my favorite.
Happy to be back. Love,
L
Go forth and testify. Share your truth. <3
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” – attributed to Samuel Clemens