First of all, I want to thank all the folks who have wished me well after the last post. Y’all are awesome! And to the rest of you who didn’t, well…I’m watching you and I know where you live. No, not really. Well, I do know where each and every one of you live, but I’m far too busy right now to dispatch any nightgaunts or zoogs to deliver any “friendly reminders,” so it’s all good.

Anyway, for the recently-passed seventh anniversary of the September 11th attacks, I was going to post a short little piece called “First Responder” that is kinda/sorta tangentially related to “City of Pillars,” but even though it’s just a few pages long, I’ve simply been too busy with work and General Bulshytt to finish the damn thing and post it! I’ll have it up this week, though. I started writing it just to get the juices flowing again before jumping back into the swirling chaos of Manhattan, and it’s definitely gotten the venom coursing into my tongue’s barbs again. Let’s just say that “City of Pillars” (and, to a lesser degree, “First Responder”) are rapidly turning into savage political satires as well as blood-and-slime-drenched monsterfests. Being of a rather conservative bent himself, I’m not sure Grandpa Theobald would particularly approve, but I’m pretty sure he’d be intrigued by the things I’m doing with his mythology.

On that note, there’s also a short essay that I’m writing as a promotional piece for Creative Commons licensing, explaining why I believe HPL and, for that matter, the “amateur journalism” subculture that he held so dear, would’ve loved CC-licensing, considering that many of them promulgated a doctrine of fair use and open sharing of ideas and content in the early 20th Century that anticipates contemporary “copyfighting” measure by nearly a century. Those dedicated men and women—protobloggers that they were—were quite ahead of their time and I believe they should finally get their due acknowledgement for their contribution to the development of open culture standards. But that’s still very much so Under Construction, and must naturally take a backseat to “City of Pillars” and further development of original content for this site, so….

Keep your eyes peeled to this space for Fresh Eldritch Content! I’ve begun to shake the cobwebs from my mind and build up a serious head of steam, which will be blasting your faces off in a few days!

Damn. It’s been a while since I’ve updated this site….Greater than a month. And it’s going to be a while before I have anything of substance to add. I’ll get to it…eventually. But not anytime soon.

Simply put, the last month has been hell for me, and though things have gotten a lot better, I don’t have even the vaguest inclination to continue writing this stuff right now. I spent three days in the hospital in August when my small intestine decided to stop working again (third year in a row), and have been dealing with intermitent but debilitating attacks of extreme nausea just about every week since then. No one has any idea what’s wrong with my stomach, and I haven’t been able to see a doctor because everyone’s either so booked up or doesn’t take my insurance. I finally have an appointment this Thursday, and hopefully I’ll get to see a GI specialist soon in order to find out what the fuck is wrong with me. At least the nausea has lessened over the last two weeks.

I finally got a job, as a tech support geek with a local outsourcing contractor, and so far it’s been pretty cool—I’m only in training (that is, learning all kinds of technical stuff I already know, have known for nearly fifteen years), but there’s no stress nor bullshit to deal with, thank the Other Gods. Of course, I don’t get paid for nearly a month and don’t even have the money to pay for my fucking medications (I’ve borrowed nearly $3000 from my mother over the past months of unemployment just to pay for the shit that keeps me alive), but the job does promise to pay off eventually and certainly is enjoyable. But right now, it eats up nearly all of my time, so between not really feeling like writing anything and not having the time to do it even when I feel slightly inspired…well, stuff just isn’t getting done.

Once I’m out of training, I’ll have more time. Not much, but definitely more. And hopefully I won’t be spending too much of that time lying curled up on the floor of my bathroom while my stomach revolts just because I ate a single goddamned bean. Until then….Hell, I dunno. Read something else. I’ve managed to post a few things on my blog, and have been writing music reviews for the most excellent WeHeartMusic blog. But anything more substantial and eldritch is simply going to have to wait until I feel more capable of tackling something as intricate and massive as “City of Pillars” or “Trois Fréres.”

I noticed I’ve lost a lot of readers; my subscriber count is way down. *Shrug* Nothing I can do about that. These days, I’m having a very difficult time caring about this project myself.