House of Leaves, and, right at the end, fathers

Hi. I've been writing a lot. Got 226 first draft pages of my new novel The Old Invisible finished since February. Started it, half-heartedly, late last year. Used it for the first three months while composing as a place to be safe; used it this last month not at all. Only wrote on it.

I also have a new short story collection finished called Story of My Stories and Other Stories. I'm adding to that one as I go. I'll know when it has enough stories in it. Or maybe not. My past collections were sent to my publisher when I'd written enough to constitute a book-length work. With that as a measuring stick, I would have submitted this to them a month ago. So I don't know what I'm doing with it. All I'm sure of is the stories are coming fast. Even with my output on TOI I've still written seven new long stories and three shorter stories. This has been in the last two months. 

I guess I rarely have prodigious output (not that this is prodigious on the full scale, only in relation to what I usually write..you know what I'm saying).

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But my writing isn't what I stopped by here at the old house to talk about, actually.

I was enrolled as an English major at Eastern Kentucky University in 1997. One of my English classes (I cannot at all remember which one no matter how hard I try) assigned us some books to pick up at the college bookstore. One was Watchmen by Alan Moore. Another was House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski. My sister-in-law at that time knew more about hot books than I did. I was still reading Hemingway and Stephen King and nothing else. So she asked if she could have them when my wife at that time left me and moved back home to the hills. I gave them to her. And found later that both were major books.

I later read Watchmen, borrowed it from a friend, but have not yet read House of Leaves. Tonight I ordered it and will see what I can manage with it. I glanced through it back then and thought of it as, I don't know what, really, a really long, involved literary parlor trick? I'm going to try to actually read it this time and see how it goes. If I finish it, I'll add the designation "personal mountain top" to it on my Reading Log here.

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That's all. Happy Father's Day to you dads who are being good dads. To hell and all its dark fire to those of you dads who are doing anything other than that.

Still struggling with social media

I was the victim of people on social media in 2015. They called me things I'm not, terrible things that actually contradicted my actions as recently as a month before this began. I can't say anything else because I'm afraid something will happen to me again. I wouldn't be able to get through it again.

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I don't bring this up in search of pity or anything of that nature. I bring it up so I can explain to my writing friends why I'm no longer active on social media. It scares me, plain and simple. It's just something I wanted my friends to understand. 

Love you all.