photo by Keith Gallagher
So you may have noticed the blog has been on hiatus for a few months. Well this post contains a list, not so much as excuses, but of events that have occurred in my wife’s and my lives in the past few months.
USM:
I have been accepted into the MFA in Popular Fiction program at the University of Southern Maine Stonecoast. It is a low residency program, so I will continue to live here in Nashville and commute there for one 10 day residency per semester. The program is particularly exciting because I will be able to study genre fiction (which is looked down upon as a “lesser art” at most MFA programs), specifically fantasy fiction. I start in July.
A Job Worth Working:
At the end of April, I began working a job that miraculously fell upon me. Someone I met through my wife’s burlesque, who I ran a few 4E D&D games with, was asked by his boss if he knew anyone with experience working with Ubuntu who was a go-getter. Of all the people he knew in the world, somehow he picked the nerd who wiped his first D&D campaign completely and anticlimactically with a Behir.
In any case, the position is with a home health care company doing tech support. I’ve been learning a lot of command line and problem solving particularly in the Ubuntu OS. It has been glorious so far, particularly to not have to work multiple miserable jobs just to make ends meet.
The Flood:
All manner of creatures, including packs of dogs, brown recluses, and drug addicts were flooded out of their burrows on the first weekend of May. Shirtless and furious, they barked and bit at one another until swept under by the undertow of the rain and sewage rivers that ran through the streets.
Though it was ignored by the media, most of the Nashville area was underwater for this weekend. For us: the water levels were about a mere foot short from pouring in through our front & back doors as well as our basement. Our back yard and basement were completely underwater. My car suffered $1000+ in damage, even though we moved both our cars up to a hill before they were completely engulfed. Our typical slum-lord was “out of the country” and did not take a single action toward helping us for an entire week, meanwhile our basement was a cess-pit so foul we could basically not breathe in it. After much research and well-worded threats, he finally took care of the issue.
Big-Kid Purchases
I bought a newish car off my close friend in Illinois. It is a stick shift, and I learned via a couple fiendish hours of late-night practice and then a 7-hour trial-by-fire ride home to Nashville.
Additionally, my wife and I are currently in the market for buying a home. Stay tuned for results on that.
New Ventures:
I have started working on a new novel titled “The Perfect Fane”. The pitch? Post-Ragnarok Norse Mythology meets Epic Fantasy meets Steam-Punk. Have you been hooked? You can read some entries via the book’s new category here (starting tomorrow). More information on this project will be posted soon.
Also, my wife, the lovely Freya Luna has begun the first ever burlesque school here in Nashville. You can find information on her classes at their website: DelinquentDebutantes.com. Where can you see her perform? At the Colorado Burlesque Festival the weekend of July 9th and the Toronto Burlesque Festival the weekend of the 23rd. Also, you can find links to videos of her performances at her facebook page or her troupe’s site: Music City Burlesque.
And that about catches you up to speed. Thanks for sitting through this livejournal entry. Back to normalcy real soon, I promise.
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