What idiot didn't post today? Oops, that's me

Well,  a fine start for me isn't it? Kind of characterizes my writing style. I was the guy in school who wrote a theme paper and then went and did the outline.

I must apologize for not having a sharply written blog (or any written blog) in time for the morning commute and coffee (though if you read blogs while commuting I cannot be held responsible by your auto insurer).

Okay, here's my story. I got my interest in writing from, ironically, television.  I was an avid fan of Creature Double Feature on WLVI-Channel 56 in Boston.  Every Saturday at 1 p.m. I would be in front of the TV watching old grade B (and grade Z) sci-fi flicks like "Zontar: Thing from Uranus" (actually from Venus but if you see the movie, you'll get the joke).

I thought I could write a better story than most of the movies so I set pen to paper.  I got my first professional exposure as a reporter for the Medford (Mass.) High School Mustang.  After moving to Euless, Texas in 1982, I wrote for the Trinity High School Palantir, eventually becoming managing editor.

I went to Prairie View A&M University where I learned how to put out a professional product with 1970's technology.  I mean, I once went to a college newspaper convention in Austin and found out the PVAMU (a historically black institution) was the only big school in Texas still using spray mount and exacto knives.

The Navy interrupted my writing career but I sent articles to a magazine called Mini-World that catered to Japanese students and businessmen trying to learn about the English-speaking world.  I don't think I set back relations more than a decade.

After the Navy, I worked for a magazine publisher as sports editor, columnist and special projects manager.  Alas, I was the only real journalist in the place so people never batted an eye when I interviewed Arnold Palmer, George Foreman, Steffi Graff et al.  A real bummer when people ask you who Arnold Palmer is and they say it with a totally straight face (though the subscribers loved the articles).

Eventually, we got bought out by Tribune Media and I drifted to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.  If you Google it, you'll find my name on several big articles, as well as being burned in effigy.  I'd say that my skills with the FWST were vast, but my stories seemed to be half-vast.

But, after all my working travails, I find myself back into freelancing as a sports writer for Examiner.com, covering Black College Sports.  I continue to write my short stories and have finished two novels (Hunters and Land of the Blind), two novellas or novellettes (Crawl and They Call the Wind Muryah), an anthology (Dark Tidings) and several shorts that have appeared online in Writer's Bump, Far Side of Midnight, Spectacular Speculation and SFH Dominion.  I have also been published in the Writer's Bump anthology and received Honorable Mention (Top 10%) in the 2007 L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Contest.

I feel I have made supreme accomplishments and have become a legend in my own mind (I think I've used that phrase to death, so I must retire it before Clint Eastwood sues me).

I am grateful that C.J. Ellisson saw fit to ask me to join this group. I can always learn something (like how to publish on time and not get bitched out by C.J.).

And, next time, I will not only be on time with the blog, but actually have a good topic to discuss.

Ahem, you can wake up now.  I'm finished.

P.S.:  Oops, fooled you.  I'm still not done.  Hunters was published by the late, lamented Mystic Moon Press, but I still count it as published.

Land of the Blind is very popular with the folks of Writing.com and Harley Palmer's Writing Academy.  I am polishing it for publishing and am looking at Tor, DAW and Leucrota Press.

I also have works being considered by Far Side of Midnight, Spectacular Speculation and Farscape 3.

And now I will go back to trying to do something I haven't done too well at for the past 30 years -- getting organized.

Thanks for your time and patience.