Confession time

 I have a confession.

Two actually.

Let's deal with the second, smaller one first. For those who know me, this hardly qualifies as a confession -- some might say it's been painfully evident for years.

I'm not all that tech-savvy.

It's been a tad more than six weeks since my last blog posting, and it's entirely because I thought I had lost access to my blog. I logged on one day, went to the dashboard, and my blog -- at least this one, my Dark Scribblings, was not there. I could see the blog on the front end, like you do, as a reader, but when I went to the dashboard, it wasn't there. A few older blogs I haven't used in years were there, but no Dark Scribblings. 

I poked around, closed it out and re-opened, tried to look up trouble-shooting guidelines, but nothing. For two or three weeks I tried multiple times, to no avail.

This past weekend I made one more attempt, with the idea I'd just have to scrap Dark Scribblings and start an entirely new blog, and it still didn't work. Then I clicked on my profile, then clicked on my picture and voila! I was in.

It's still not right -- when I go to the dashboard like I should there's no option to open the back end of my blog, but at least for now this double-clicking of other links seem to work. So for now, I'll keep blogging.

Now for my main confession.

I'm not a very good reader.

Well, that's not entirely accurate. Let's say I'm a lazy reader.

No, that's not right, either. Maybe we can just say I've not been a diligent reader.

Two of the main tenets of being a writer are to write a lot (as in every day), and to read even more. Read voraciously -- in the genre you're writing, in other genres, non-genre fiction, even non-fiction work, just anything you can get your hands on.

I was once that voracious reader. All during my childhood years, well, at least since third grade, I loved reading. I'd always get the maximum number of books allowed on weekly trips to the school library. I thought the public library was the most magical place on Earth. I'd read novels, non-fiction, short stories, magazines (Reader's Digest was a particular favorite in our household), cereal boxes, clothing tags, anything I could get my hands on. 

My reading appetite continued well into adulthood. I remember once, and I guess it's safe to say this now, 30 years after the fact, but I once called out of work "sick" because I was so engrossed in reading a novel.

Well, okay, maybe twice.

In recent years it's been a struggle to read at night, or in the morning. Or most any time.

I suppose a little context might be in order. I'm a daily newspaper editor, in a world of shrinking newsroom staffs and higher demands on newsrooms. I edit, revise, and rewrite somewhere between 10 and 30 articles and press releases a day. Sometimes more. I peruse wire stories, look over work from other editors in the company, read other papers and make my way through close to 100 emails a day (that doesn't count the ones I trash on sight or after glancing over the first couple of lines). 

Some days, the word count of all my reading might equal close to half a novel's worth of words, not to mention the time I spend editing and rewriting.

When I come home most nights the last thing I want to do is read.

I don't mean to suggest I've totally sworn off of reading fiction. Over the past eight months or so I've reread a couple of old Robert B. Parker mysteries, read THE LOOK-A-LIKE by Erica Spindler (an enjoyable murder mystery), devoured THE HOLLOW KIND by Andy Davidson (one of the better horror novels I've read in a long time), made my way through Eric LaRocca's novella and short story collection THINGS HAVE ONLY GOTTEN WORSE SINCE WE LAST SPOKE, and I just finished the paranormal romance DO YOUR WORST by Rosie Danan, which was a fun read.

But that's only a half-dozen novels or novel-length works in eight months. My wife, who might be accurately described as the MAD READER, can devour nearly that many in a week, while holding a full-time teaching position.

Truth is, I miss reading a lot. There's nothing quite like getting wrapped up in a good story, losing a half-hour (or more) of sleep simply because you can't put down the book, or pausing just to think "wow" and then going back to reread a page because the writing is so sterling.

Not to mention I should be reading more to sharpen my writing skills.

So here's my plan -- starting this week, I'm going to  spend at least 30 minutes a day, at least five days a week, reading from a novel or short story collection. For now it doesn't matter much about genre, just so I'm doing the work. 

My first selection will be the one pictured a little higher in this blog -- the anthology DEATHREALM SPIRITS. I bought this last October, when it was first published, because I loved the old Deathrealm magazine. It w as quite possibly my favorite, or at least among my two favorite, magazines from back in the day.

Yet it's set on my desk since last autumn, cracked only long enough for me to read the introduction by editor extraordinaire Stephen Mark Rainey, and to look over a most promising table of comments. 

Tonight, that ends, and I'll be diving in to the first tale of the collection, GHOST IN THE CELLS by Joe R. Lansdale.

I'll keep you all posted on how the reading goes. For now, thanks for stopping by!