Perception and my blog

Boy, do I feel like George W. Bush today.....err, scratch that analogy. Poor choice. Let's see, who do I feel like? I can't think of anyone right off hand, but I certainly do feel misunderstood. Sure, my blog is a personal thing. It's sort of an online diary and, well, I've got a lot of things going on personally and professionally that I write about. You can say I'm "venting" when I write a blog entry and, in truth, I look back at some of them and they help me understand certain things that I didn't understand at the time. But, my blog also gives people an insight into a piece of the puzzle that is my mind and it gives them reason for pause. I can understand that, I suppose. I'm a complex feller. Always have been. I would also, however, ask people to understand that I am just cleaning out the cobwebs (and, consequently, the spiders) in my head. Making room for good thoughts. I've said many good things here but, apparently, it's the bad things that people remember and linger on. Don't know if it's simply human nature there or what, but I will try to be less personal in the future just to prevent misunderstandings.

Hope everyone is doing well. Watched THE WORLD, THE FLESH AND THE DEVIL last night. Classic last-man-on-earth movie that is, sadly, out-of-print. I found a copy and highly recommend it.

See, that wasn't so bad, was it?

later,
Roger

The next task at hand

Well, we're in the waning hours of Christmas 2007 and I'm looking forward to the new year. 2007 was a year of transition for me. I didn't plan it that way, of course, but life isn't something you can plan sometimes. I rolled with the punches, took what was thrown at me with as much humility and genuine honesty as I could. I wrote about it in my blog a lot over the year and, trust me, my blog has gotten me in hot water more than once this past year. But, you know what? At least I was honest. I told the truth in the way I saw it. The better part of the past decade for me was riddled in lies. Lies of love, lies of commitment, lies of the heart. I tried to be honest when I wrote things down. I "wrote what I knew", which is a writer's credo. Fiction-wise, I wrote like a fiend this past year as well. I finished HATE CITY LIMITS very early in the year, wrote a script for a movie/comic book called THE WEREWOLVES OF ZACAR VII (an idea I've had in my mind for well over a quarter of a century), which I still need to do some work on, wrote a novellette called CITY OF BLINDING LIGHTS that I hope to finish final edits on before New Year's Day, wrote a low-budget movie script for THE BIG MUDDY MONSTER that will be produced, I hope, early next year, and am in the final stages of writing the first draft of PATH OF DARKNESS, which was originally entitled BLEEDING HEARTS. On top of that, I wrote a handful of short stories and a poetry collection entitled ALL SUMMER LONG. I have 20 or so poems for another collection to be entitled GAS STATION ROSE. Tomorrow, I plan to go to the Cellar (my favorite writing haunt since the ex headed off) and will finish writing SCRUFFY'S FIELD, a short story I've had in mind for a little while that will be dedicated to Stephanie because, well, she inspired it. It'll be a fantasy tale of love lost and regained.

On top of that, the anthology I co-edited, HELL IN THE HEARTLAND, ought to be back and ready to ship the first week of January. Cross your fingers.

2007 was a busy year. I tried to keep myself busy to keep my mind off things.

I've tried to make this blog entry less personal because, well, my arse is still sore from the last criticism of my blog.

Hope everyone got what they wanted for Christmas. Me? I got a blanket to keep me warm. Practical gift, considering how cold life can be sometimes.

I'll post a new entry before the turn of the year.

later
Roger

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas, blog readers! We've made it another year! Reason enough to celebrate. I'll let you know what presents I got tomorrow. Take care, Roger

The Ghost That Haunts Me

I’ve been thinking of all the follies in my life of late. There have been many, it seems. I have loved and lost a woman who was the other half of my heart. Her departure, not unpredicted, left a gaping hole in my soul. Was she justified in leaving? Well, she thinks so. I’m not really so sure. Certainly, she went out of her way to treat me like a nobody…and it grated on me until I had to demand she stop. She didn’t just stop; she left. But, she will never be loved as much by another man. She knows that and, once in a while, I detect a hint of sorrow in her voice when we’re talking about our children. At least, I think I do. I hope I do.

It took me over a year to want to be with another woman. I languished in a self-imposed envelope of pain. I loved my wife; I told you that. But, gradually, I realized that, if she had loved me back, she would not have done many of the things she did. She would have heeded my requests, gentle at first and more forceful as she ignored them, and given me the simple things any real wife would have been happy to give her husband. I came to realize that, through some inadequacy of her own, she was incapable of such a simple thing as I requested.

I looked around and found a woman. She was beautiful to me in many ways, and I dared to want to be with her. I was still in pain and probably should have thought twice, but the loneliness and the sorrow was eating me alive and I knew there was nothing I wanted more than to have someone who wanted to hold me.

We got together. We held one another. She helped me in ways that I had been previously denied, and I adored the woman. But, I still had a large hole in my heart and, while it was slowly healing, it wasn’t ready. I told her I wasn’t ready for some things, but she was. She’d been looking for me for a long, long time, she said. I was happy. But, the past kept creeping into our relationship. I have two beautiful and wonderful children with my ex-wife and, therefore, had to deal with the woman on a daily basis. It grated on my new relationship and, sadly, I think that’s over with now. I cared immensely for Stephanie and wish her nothing but good things. I’m sorry the ghosts of my past are still with me. Believe me when I tell you I tried to push them away, but they simply wouldn’t go away.

Unfortunately, Ghosts are like that.

The Idjits Guide to the Internet

Forget that last post, your humble author forgot one of the fundamental rules of the Internet - reboot your modem. Once I did, all the planets realigned and my high speed Internet was cruising again. Oddly enough, both the Annihilation Press website (www.annihilationpress.com) and my personal one (www.rogerdaletrexler.com) were back up as well. Don't know what the heck happened there and I really don't care as long as everything is working. It's 3:15 a.m. at the moment. I awoke to the sound of the cat bouncing off the walls downstairs at 2 a.m. (he's weird) and couldn't go back to sleep, so I decided to get up and get a little work done. Today is the Printing and Duplicating annual Xmas party and I'm looking forward to seeing my old friend and mentor John Tweedy. John retired last year and I miss him. He taught me a lot about printing.

Speaking of printing, I've had nothing but difficulty getting the cover to HELL IN THE HEARTLAND printed. I'm going to look for a new printer this week and send the PDF file to someone new soon. Guess I'm not the only Internet Idjit out there.

Hope everyone's doing well. Enjoy the clipart with this post....and spread the Xmas cheer.

later,
Roger

Crap

Crap, crap, crap, crap, crap. Does the excrement seem to be flowing onto your humble author today. I just checked my personal website, www.rogerdaletrexler.com, and it's down. It was down last night, too, but I thought that was a fluke. I THINK I'm paid up on my personal website until the middle of next year. Also, the Annihilation Press website appears to be down as well. That one isn't supposed to be renewed for several months as well. So, I have to waste what little free time I have to contact the website host, Host Monster, and find out what the stinking deal is. That, plus my high speed Internet is down as well due to the fact that I chose to pay the light bill on time instead of the phone bill once too often. Giving serious thought to telling Verizon where to stick it. And, the sad part about it was that I'm really not behind...I was just late by a week. Where's Verizon's Xmas spirit? Ol' Ebenezer must run the company. Thankfully, the blog is still up and I have my free dial-up through SIU to stay in contact with the World Wide Web. Money's been tight this year from paying lawyers and shyster bike mechanics (a lawsuit is in the works on the latter) but I plan on getting things back in order financially soon. Hopefully, 2008 will be a far better year. Might be going back to Cable DSL too. Mediacom was a little more expensive, but it was never shut off for being a week late. You get it when I get it, fellers....and my kids come first. Sorry if that's an inconvenience to some overpaid executive.

Oh well, time for bed. It'll all be better in the morning.

I hope.

Love American Style (or "Love, part 3")

What a crappy day here in good ol' southern Illinois. It was, as Robin Trower best described it, a "long misty day." The kids and I were locked up in the house most of the day. Our jaunt to the local mall proved hectic...too many Xmas shoppers. So, around 3 p.m. I decided to load the kids up and drive down to my sister Paula's house. They'd bought a beautiful new large screen HDTV and my kids sat there and watched SpongeBob Squarepants in the most vivid color I've ever seen. I started talking with Paul and my mom about things that had happened since last we'd all sat and talked. I got a divorce, my youngest sister sued my mother for $10K and got it, and the new woman in my life, Stephanie. There were some interesting points made, and I thought I should ponder on them extensively. My mother made note of the fact that my ex-wife never took my last name, preferring, instead, to keep her maiden name. I reckon it made things simpler when she fled for higher ground. But, Mom said, "I don't care how much you love a woman, if she won't take your last name, there's something wrong." Well, of course, that could be called old-school and decidedly non-feminist, but I tend to agree somewhat. Of course, I DO know at least one couple where the woman didn't take his last name and they seem to be as happy as clams. But, my ex only used my last name when it was of benefit to her. I tried to take that with a grain of salt, but I have to admit that it did grate on me. I suppose, in hindsight, it was an indicator that she didn't want to be here. Trust me, there were many such signs. The day she moved out, she said something like: "this is terribly unfair to you." I replied, "when have you ever been fair to me?" It was a question she did not answer then, nor has she made an attempt at answering it since. I suppose there is no worthwhile answer to the question, anyway, so it will go unanswered forever.

So, what does this have to do with love, you ask? Hell if I know. Recently, I've been contemplating the difference between love and sex a lot. You CAN have sex without love. Many, many, many people do. I think I did for the better part of a decade. But, can you have LOVE without SEX? Certainly, a strong sexual relationship is beneficial to both people in a relationship. But, is it necessary? These days, I think having someone you can truly rely upon in a pinch is more important when LOVE is involved. If you can't have faith in someone, can't rely on them to cover BOTH your asses, then you're just having sex with them. If they won't give you what you need in "love", then there's going to be trouble somewhere down the road.

Find someone you can depend on. If the sex is there, and it's good, you're lucky indeed.

Ponder that, my friends. I'll relate more as I figure it out better myself.

Tis the season

Well, I figured I'd better put up a new post since Craig Reeves (of Craig and Bert fame - see my poetry collection, ALL SUMMER LONG, for a poem about them) said he was reading my blog regularly. I saw Craig and Bert and a the whole gang out on Saturday night when Stace England rocked PK's. (Check out Stace's website and buy his cds, www.staceengland.com). It was an awesome show with Chris McKinley providing some stellar backing vocals).

There's not all that much to report elsewise, I guess. I've got MURDER AT PK'S all but finished. The epilogue is all that needs to be written, and I'll try to do that Thursday night when I am, once again, sans children. Right now, I'm just enjoying their company. It's December and that means Xmas is right around the corner. Of course, I'm not ready. Not by a long shot. I'm baking cookies tonight, though, in an effort to get in the Xmas spirit. Of course, my daughter Hope is eating the butterscotch chips out of the cookie dough, but that's what the holidays are for. In between butterscotch chips, she and Darrien are watching RUDOLPH THE RED NOSE REINDEER on television. I'm waiting for the cookies to finish baking so I can have a cookie (there's a metaphor in that somewhere). So, life ain't too bad. Hope everyone is doing well....and, Craig, I'll try to post something more interesting next time.

later,
Roger