666

I just realized I’ve made 665 posts on this blog prior to this one. 666 isn’t a particular large number of posts (I was well over 2000 when I got tired of the previous blog), but it seems like it should be a significant number for a (mostly) horror blog. It is after all, the number of the devil, after all, but what sort of devilish thing could I come up with to mark the occasion. A girl I dated in college did tell me I was the devil, once, but that doesn’t seem like a terribly interesting story, and in my defense her sister was hot and a bit of a slut. I just don’t know

Crap, I just realized I wasted the landmark 666th post talking about how I don’t know what to say. Oh well, come the 1984th one I’ll have something insightful to say about politics.
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Another Mea Culpa

Due to assorted personal issues, posting here has been sporadic lately. Okay, by sporadic I mean non-existent. Hopefully, I will be getting back to a more or less regular schedule soon. One of the interesting things I noticed in coming back to check the blog’s stats is my number of “followers” grew much faster during the period when I wasn’t posting than when I was. This begs the question of whether people like it better when I don’t have anything to say. Anyway, I hope to catch up on a pretty extensive backlog over the coming days.
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Well, 2011

To say I’ve been lax on posting is a big understatement. I’m not sure why it has been so difficult to put something up, I suppose it’s just ennui. Ennui in this case means lazy, but when you say it in French, it sounds cool, like I have some sort of elegant wasting disease rather than being unwilling to get my fat ass in gear. Anyway, for the third time since Halloween, I’m going to start posting more. I have read quite a lot of interest, including discovering the work of J. A. Konrath, so I have a backlog of things to drone on about. Er, Happy New Year, but if you’ve been waiting for me to say it to get your own year started, you have the same problem I do.

Excelsior.
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My Posting Has Not Been So Prolix

After the big October push, I slacked off of posting, but I will resume shortly, I promise. Like you care.
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Yeah, Well, Okay

So I took the week to think about it and have decided not to nuke the site. Hold on to your hats, as I'm sure an announcement like this will have a big effect on the stock market.
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Welcome to Blogtober

Who gets tired of puns? Oh? Really? Sorry, I won’t do it again.

October is a special month for most horror fans, as it culminates in the most important event on the horror geeks calendar, variously celebrated as either Halloween or my birthday. In recognition of this, I will try to amp up the posting for October, with new content, and reprints of past material I think worth a second look (mostly lists and anything else that might relate directly to Halloween) whenever I get lazy. I needed a tag to delineate these reprints from new material, so I searched for an appropriate term for reliving an experience you’ve already worked through once, and naturally came up with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. So if I reprint a list like the 10 Best Horror Novels of All Time or 3 Things to Do in Huntsville When You’re Bored, it will be followed by and tagged with PTSD. That way, those of you rabid readers who have already memorized all the content on the site will know what to skip.

So sit back enjoy the site as much as possible, and welcome to Bl…October.
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Getting Back in the Game

Posting has been light of late, what with the holidays and various weirdness in the real life, such that it is, but normal levels will return by next week. Don't look so thrilled. Anyway, during the hiatus, I've read several books, and watched a number of movies, including at least two that feature improbable giant reptiles, so you won't want to miss it.
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That Lesbian Vampire Thing

As predicted, the post I had earlier about Lesbian Vampire Killers caused an uptick in hits for the site - about a 20% increase in traffic. Thanks to all vampires flying the rainbow flag for that. The confusing thing is according to google analytics, none of the increase is due to that particular page, or people googling any variation of "lesbian". Strange. Anyway, I've got two more movies from the seemingly limitless lesbian vampire subgenre on tap, so we'll see what happens.
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IMDB?

I obsess over the stupidest things. According to Google Analytics, for some time I've been getting a steady stream of visitors to the site who got here by clicking on a link somewhere on the Internet Movie database site (www.imdb.com), and I haven't been able to find it in its tangled web of pages. I assume somewhere there is a post that says "Hey, check out all the things this idiot got wrong." I realize it doesn't matter, but if you reached this site from imdb and notice this post, would you mind posting exactly where you clicked? Then I can mark this mystery solved and go on to the next irrelevent thing. Thanks.
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Update

I'm back. And the world didn't end after all. The usual inane posting to resume in a brief while.

A Brief Hiatus

I'm going to be away from posting for a couple of days, since I have to go attend to something that has to do with my job (I work for the government). I'm not allowed to say exactly what it is, but just as a heads-up, if you should see a sudden flash of light in the sky, if I were you I'd make it a point to be behind at least six inches of leaded protection in two minutes or less. Sleep tight!
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I Get Letters (No Kidding)

Someone e-mailed me a question about the organization of my sidebar, so I thought I’d answer it here. As you can see, my “links” are divided into three categories: General Horror Links, Horror Writers, and Other Blogs of Note. Setting aside the clumsiness of this, the e-mailer pointed out that several of those listed under Other Blogs of Note (actually a majority, but who is counting) are themselves writers. Am I making a distinction between writers I think are good and those I don’t? No, absolutely not. The major reason I did it like that was being in a hurry to throw the site up, and then being too lazy to go back and fix it. I work for the government, after all, and it is tiring organizing the big Friday bonfires where we burn the leftover tax money for the week.

I’ve had a chance to at least glimpse at work by John Hornor Jacobs, Kent Gowran, C. Michael Cook, Erik Williams, Mark Justice, and Erik Smetana, and I can tell you they are writers to keep an eye on. Some very talented folks with as yet just a few publications under their belt, this is a group from which some of your favorite will come from in the years ahead. When it happens, remember I told you so. I still won’t have gotten around to fixing the site.
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