The unavoidable blog question, and others

One does have to wonder what they mean when they say things like "bloggers responded by... " and "the blog community...". Exactly who makes up these nebulous organizations? Who decides who is a worthy blogger, a fellow of note and repute, while the rest are more or less empty windbags? I ask you.

On a lighter note, the new Conan trade paperback by Dark Horse is coming out. It's well worth checking out, because this comic series actually takes the original work by Robert E. Howard and turns it into comics, rather than trying to tell new Conan stories. Of course, Howard only wrote one Conan novel, and many short stories that were hit or miss, but his writing is much better than that of any other Conan writer. Why? Because Howard told a story that was important to him with characters that he believed in; everyone else, to some degree, is just "doing Conan." And whether you know something about Conan or he's just a big muscly guy in a loincloth to you, it's never going to be the same as the complex, powerful individual Howard visualized and brought to life.

Writing continues to progress with difficulty. I think I have far too many projects open at once. It's time to wrap up a short story for my occult story collection and focus on the four other major projects I have right now: my thesis for grad school, my fantasy novel, my cyberpunk novel, and a new project. Why a new project, when all of that is already weighing on me? Because I'm constantly on the lookout for something new and exciting that gets my imagination going at critical mass and makes me feel like I'm creating a world that's really and deeply meaningful.

Maybe I'll talk more about how I intend to do that in a later blog.

Take care, my ugly ducklings.