Hey look, a thing!

Annnnnd... we're live. It’s post numero uno and I am actively smacking down the part of me that wants to write 96,542 words to contextualize this site — my history with writing, my relationship with blogging, and all manner of metadata that would provide you precisely zero value. With tears streaming down my cheeks, in that moment I knew it was my destiny to write, to be the precious little snowflake I was called to be… Ew. Gross. Instead, I’ll open with some housekeeping with a smidgen of backstory to give you an idea of what you can expect from this thing.

Jay Bloggy-Blog

Over the past several months, I’ve burnt an inordinate amount of midnight oil hacking on a rather fancy manifestation of this website. It’s sleek, creative, graphical, with a dash of razzle-dazzle. At the very last minute I decided to take things an entirely different direction. This thing is simple, minimal, lightweight, and totes basic.

Let’s imagine for a moment that you’re wondering why I would do such a thing. The catalyst for my eleventh-hour switcheroo was the realization that I just wanted a platform to write. No shameless self-promotion, no marketing, just writing. That means writing-writing, which I’ll expand on a little later, but also blogging. I’ve come to accept that there are all kinds of things floating around my gooey gray matter that I’d really like to unpack - whether my posts ever get a single read. As a fellow with some white streaking my otherwise Cheetos-orange beard, I’ve accumulated a lot of life experience. There’s the big stuff like family, faith, and career. There’s also a pile of interests that I’d like to nerd out on from time to time. I decided that I needed a catch-all for all of this. One great big wordpile.

By the way, I didn’t burn down that fancy website. I plan to launch it as my marketing-focused "author site" when the time is right.

Pew-pews & huzzahs

I began writing sci-fi and fantasy with haphazard intentionality in 2017. Piles and piles of words, story fragments, half-baked concepts, and draft manuscripts litter my laptop. Fundamentally, this website is a forcing function intended to bring my writing projects to happy closure. Or even unhappy closure. How about just plain ol’ closure? Yep. That.

I’ve also developed a fascination with short-short fiction (dribble, drabble, micro, flash, etc.). There is something special about a story told with very few words. From a practical standpoint, after spending years banging my brain against my manuscripts for my maybe-novels, the thought of actually finishing something and releasing it into the wild for other humans to read is tantalizing. I also think that short fiction is particularly well-suited for releasing on a blog.

Presto-web-o! Web-a-cadabra! Here we are. In addition to my general purpose bloggery, I’ll be making my short-short fiction of many flavors freely available. You’ll need a free account to access it — I just don’t want spiders, bots, trolls, and other nasties to glom it all.

I do not claim that any of my stories will be anything resembling “good.” They might be horrible little things. Writing in these short-short formats is new to me and I will be learning as I go. I believe that the muscles I develop through creating stories with such a small word budget will ultimately help my writing overall. Also, placing a demand on myself to cultivate new ideas, even if bite-sized, will only serve to lubricate my Muse-chute.

Updates

I’m currently juggling a number of posts and short fiction drafts that will inevitably land on this humble blog. I would encourage you to reload this page every twelve minutes so you don’t miss anything. Alternatively, you might consider subscribing to the site. As a subscriber, you will be notified of new posts by email and get free-as-in-beer access to all content.

Thanks for being here!