It’s late, and I am not up to writing fiction tonight. On nights like this, when I want to keep my writing streak up, I go to the Internet Speculative Fiction Data Base. If there is any news in the science fiction/fantasy/mystery/horror fields, I might do a post. Otherwise, if there is a birthday of someone I’m familiar with, especially if they were prominent in the field, l do a birthday post.

I check the ISFDB pretty much every day or every other day. For the last couple of days, it hasn’t been online. I get a message saying the web server is down. Does anyone know what’s up with that? I don’t have any contacts with it.

Things have been slow lately. At least they feel that way. It could be because I gave an exam last week, graded over the weekend, and passed the exams back yesterday and today. We have a fall break this year, which will be Thursday and Friday. I’m hoping to get caught up on other grading between class and a committee meeting tomorrow afternoon.

As for what I’ll be doing over the break, I’ll try to get some writing and reading done. We got a good rain last week, and now things are green again. I’ll mow one of the days I’m home in the afternoon. I’ll still be working at the post office in the morning.

The temperature seems to have settled in to something more comfortable. I’ve been listening to ghost stories on audiobook while driving back and forth to the university. Trying to get in the mood for Halloween and Christmas.

What’s up in your world?

I haven’t been reviewing any recent books or magzines lately.

There are several reasons for that. For starters, I’ve not had a lot of  time to read. It takes me far to long to finish a book because of, well, reasons. Add to that there hasn’t been a lot of newer stuff I want to read.

That being said, I’ve backed off on reviewing because I see it as something of a conflict of interest. I’m working on becoming a better writer. And while some of the top markets are not places I want to submit to because of their contract terms, there are still some I would be willing to submit to. I don’t want to alienate those editors. I also don’t want to appear to be building myself up by tearing another writer down.

That’s why I’ve only reviewed older works for the last couple of years.

This was the topic of at least one conversation last weekend at Robert E. Howard Days. Someone I won’t name (*waves at Jason*) has wanted me to review some of his anthologies for quite a while.

I’ve had a policy of not writing bad reviews (as a general rule).  So I’m going to make recommendations for things I like.

There may not be a lot of reviews, excuse me, recommendations, anytime soon. My reading time is still pretty tight.

But I’ll try to work some recommendations in. There are some independent writers whose work I enjoy that you may not be aware of.

Just a quck note to say I’m still here and this blog hasn’t gone dormant.

Well, not completely.

I’ve been teaching summer school. right now I’m teaching an online physics coulrse and putting it together as I go. It’s been taking up most of my time. I have two weeks of class left, then I get a quick break before the fall semester starts. The rest of the time I’ve been working on writiing fiction. I’ll post a writing update after the first of August.

I’ll also post a report on Howard Days. It was a good one this year.

That’s all for now. I just wanted to let you know that I’m still around. Just dealing with responsibilities and adulting and other “fun” things.

I should have psoted  this at the first of the month, but the link to the current issue of Pulphouse hadn’t gone live.

I have a story in the current issue of Pulphouse. It’s a short little science fiction tale that I’m quite pleased with.

You can get an electronic copy at the Pulphouse Store by clicking the link. Print copies are also available.

On the writing front, I hit my goal of 2024 words per day on average in April with a little extra. I’m still a few days behind for the year, but I’m on target to meet and probably exceed that number for May. With luck, I’ll end the year ahead.

I got an email this morning from a reader, Deuce Richardson, who tried to comment twice on the Machen post.I’ve added his comment to that post and had no trouble with it.

This is the message he got:

I’m doing a challenge to write 2024 words per day (on average) in 2024. I ended January a little bit ahead, but I finished February about four and a half days behind, with just over fifty thousand words written. This puts me behind for the year.

But there are still ten months left in the year, so I have plenty of time to catch up. As of yesterday, I was over a day ahead for the month of March.

Most of what I wrote were blog posts or the current work in progress, which is dark fantasy. I started it intending it to be a short story, but I soon realized it would be something longer, probably a novel. It turned out I was right on that point. It will be a novel. I was thinking it would come in somewhere between fifty thousand and sixty thousand words. I passed sixty-two thousand words last night. I have at least three major scenes left to write, so at this point, I’m expecting it to come in at over seventy thousand words.

Other than blog posts,  I’m going to keep plugging away at this one until it’s done.