Just a note to let all of you know how it’s going. We’re all healthy, if a little stir crazy from confinement.  The governor is allowing businesses to open on a limited basis.  Here’s hoping it’s a success.  I haven’t been to a book store in over a month.

There’s a week of class left, then finals.  I’m about to be buried under a mountain of grading.  Actually, the mountain i already here.  I’ve just been ignoring it.

Tomorrow morning I’ll be helping a friend’s mother, who is in her 80s, have some trash cleared.  Some asshat dumped a load of heavy junk against her fence, and she can’t get out into the alley to take out her trash, so she walks to the end of the block and back up the alley. We’re loading it onto some trailers and taking it to the dump, which is currently only open on Wednesday and Saturday. I don’t have class tomorrow, so I’m able to help.

Then it’s back to putting in a garden.  There are two more places to till.   I’ve already planted corn, beans, and cucumbers.  Next it’s tomatoes, bell peppers, carrots, and a little okra.

I’ve got a deadline on a short story I need to finish by the end of the week.

And of course, more birthday and Retro Hugo posts.  Plus a few other things I’ve been trying to get to.  Most of those may have to wait until after finals, but I’ll get in as many as I can.  Tomorrow is the birthday of Rafael Sabatini, H. Bedford-Jones, and Jack Williamson, so I have to do something.

How’s everyone else doing.

A few nights ago, I decided to check what the traffic had been here on the blog before I went to bed.  It was high, highest it had been all month. The number on the bar graph didn’t match the total count for the day; I think it was off by two. Nothing unusual. I’ve seen that before. Just refresh the stats, and they’ll agree.

So I refreshed.  The numbers were the same.  And several page views higher than they had been before.  So I refreshed again. The numbers were climbing. And climbing.

Long story short, I was on the receiving end of some sort of attack by a bot.  I went in to the security settings and tightened things down.  Before I was done, though, that became the second highest traffic day I’d ever had.  (The highest was some years ago when a high-traffic blog linked to a post.)

Traffic seems to be back to normal, although it’s hard to be sure.  It’s been a little erratic lately, and today it is down quite a bit.  Yesterday seemed to be fine.

If anyone is having issues accessing the site, please let me know.  I tightened the security quite a bit.  Since I’m still learning about some of the security features, I don’t know if I over did it.  I would have asked this question a few days ago, but I’m got an infection hangnail, and typing has been uncomfortable, to say the least.

I haven’t posted much in the way of updates in while. There’s not a lot going on (that I want to talk about) that can make a full post, so this will be a few items that have been going on.

I participated in NaNoWriMo this year.  My goal was to write 50k words of short fiction.  I hit that with a day to go. Now I just need to finish the stories that are still incomplete.  What I thought would be short stories have turned into novelettes and novellas.  I have two science fiction, one crime, and one (very) dark fantasy to wrap up.  I’ll probably finish the fantasy since I have most of the remaining chapters fleshed out in my head and the last chapter written.

As I announced the other day, I’m going to try to post a review of a ghost story every day until Christmas. I’m also going to post other things here, so there may be days with more than one post.  I’m also going to try to post some things at Futures Past and Present relating to the 90th anniversary of Astounding/Analog.  In addition, January is Vintage Science Fiction month, so I want to try to do some posts about that.  At least until the spring semester gets rolling.

I’ve been trying to work through some courses on time management, entrepreneurship, and professional development.  Those stalled out do to Real Life commitments. I’m hoping to get back on track over the holidays.

And finally, a chance to gloat. I attended a conference in Houston just before Thanksgiving.  It was cheaper for the university to rent a car than buy me a plane ticket. This is the rental car they gave me at the airport. It only had 4 miles on it when I drove it out of the parking lot.  It had a lot more than that when I returned.  In some ways, this was the best part of the trip.

Time for a quick update.  I’m going to be making some changes.  Or rather, I’m going to be making more changes.  Some of them I’ve already implemented.

On the personal front, I’ve started a diet and exercise program.  I’ve been on it for three and a half weeks as of this writing.  I’ve not lost a lot of weight, but I think that’s partly because I’ve put on a bit of muscle mass.  I just know my pants seem to be a size or so too big, my blood pressure is lower than it’s been in years, I’m sleeping better, and I have more energy.  I’m going to be keeping this up.

I may have mentioned in a post (or was that just on Twitter) that I won a compound bow in a raffle back in May.  Turns out I’m not half bad at archery.  My son took some classes with me over the summer.  While he won’t have a lot of time to pursue the hobby, at least during marching band season, I’m going to be putting in as much time on the range as I can.  Hopefully more than once a week, which is all I’ve been able to do for the last month or so.

A colleague from down the hall has resurrected an off campus chess group.  My son and I have been playing in it.  We’ve been meeting in a coffee house on Friday nights, and when it closes, we head over to a Mexican restaurant for good food and live mariachi music.  Now that high school football marching band season has started, we’ll be cutting back on that.

There are some trends at work that have made me get serious about planning an exit strategy.  I’m not going to say what form that will take just yet since I’m still considering some things.  I want enough secondary streams of income in place to be able to walk away on my terms and at my time.

Writing will be one of those streams, but not the only one if what I’m working on bears fruit.  And at least initially, probably not the main one.  Speaking of writing, I’ve placed two short stories in anthologies in the last month.  I’m hoping to make some progress on some short novels this fall.

As far as blogging, I’m going to move in a slightly different direction.  I’ll still be blogging here, but I’m going to increase my presence on Futures Past and Present.  I want to read more science fiction, especially adventure sf and space along with rereading authors I grew up reading who have fallen out of favor these days.   I’ll still post here, but there will be fewer reviews of novels and more of short fiction.  I’ll also do more art posts and continue to feature selected authors on their birthdays.  I’ve tried to do a couple of birthday posts on Futures Past and Present but haven’t been able to get the stories I had in mind read before the day was over.  My intention is to get a couple of posts up there over the weekend, so keep an eye out for them.

So what’s up with you folks?

Classes start tomorrow.  I’ve spent much of the last week trying to get things organized. We had a faculty member come down with a health issue that will prevent him from teaching this semester.  We were already understaffed.  I get to teach an additional class.  (I’m being compensated, and it will let me try some changes we’re wanting to make with a small group before implementing them on a large scale.)

I answer directly to the department chair.  He was recently promoted to associate dean.  I’ll find out who my new boss is sometime tomorrow when the interim is announced.

There’s been several of types of drama I won’t go into except to say some of the biggest prima donnas and divas aren’t in the entertainment industry.  They’re in academia.

Ilya Repin, Barge Haulers on the Volga, 1870-1873

Hopefully, this semester won’t feel like I’m one of the  Volga Boatmen.

I’ve done almost no writing for the past five months.  I’ve found I need a pretty consistent schedule to stay productive.  I intend to eat better, exercise more, and go to bed earlier.  Part of the problem has been that by the time I get a few free minutes to write, it’s so late, I can hardly put two words together.  My son will have band until 6:00 after school (if they get out on time, which isn’t a guarantee). Rather than taking him home and then back in the evening, I’ll just stay at work until time to pick him up.  Then I’m home for the evening most nights.  This will help.  I’ve got several short novels and novellas in various stages of completion I want to try to finish up and publish this fall.

As for the blog, I’ll try to post something every week.  I’ll also try not to let it turn into a birthday blog, although I’ll keep doing those posts.  I’m not going to accept many requests to review things.  That has started to look like work.  I’ll post about things I’ve read, although they’ll be mini reviews more than full length reviews.  And occasionally I’ll rant about something stupid that happens in the field.

So that’s how things stand and what I’m planning on doing for the next few months.

No, I haven’t forgotten I said I was going to do more posts on Leigh Brackett, starting with “The Vanishing Venusians”.  Things have been total chaos.  My son has had multiple band concerts, I’ve had the crud, there was a funeral to attend, a student disciplinary hearing on a Title IX case, a night at a hotel due to a plumbing issue (that required more than one visit from the plumber), and various other things to deal with.  I’ve been a bit distracted.

I’ll be back to posting in the next day or so.  I’ve got several titles to discuss across more than one blog.

Just so you know.

It’s been a bit longer than usual since I posted.  If you keep up with me on Twitter, you know I haven’t fallen off the face of the Earth.  It’s been busy, to say the least.

My son’s robotics team advanced to the state competition, which was the second weekend of the month, and I went with them.  (It’s really a regional competition because teams from other states were also there, but since it’s mostly Texas teams, we just referred to it as state.)  They came in 34th out of 59, which is approximately 20 spots higher than they’ve ranked in the past.  That’s a lot better than it sounds because my son’s team was four middle school kids working after school and competing against mostly high school teams, many of whom met as a class.  (My son’s robotics class is working on other projects.)  We’re all extremely proud of them.

Because of some weird thing with the university calendar, we only have three days left before classes are completely over and finals start.  So many of the time consuming things I normally deal with after Thanksgiving, such as wrapping up labs, have already been done.

Between travel for the robotics meet, ending the semester things, and really nasty allergies, I’ve not had time or mental ability to post or work on fiction.  I’m hoping to post quite a few things over the Thanksgiving weekend, so keep an eye on this space.