Kiss My Asterisk
Published May 12th, 2010 | 
So I recently published this poem by this poet who uses the asterisk as mark-up to call for italics. Since he didn’t state his preference in his cover letter, I didn’t italicize his text. My bad, I suppose. But, I didn’t appreciate his snotty email after publication telling me how I didn’t format his poem properly. I’m thinking, you send a poem that’s poorly formatted to begin with and you use the asterisk, what do you expect? I’m no soothsayer. I formatted the poem as best as I could. And, to be fair, I fixed the poem shortly after reading his email. That’s not the problem.
See . . .
I must be getting old. Seriously, when did the asterisk become the method of choice for calling for italics in text? For as long as I can remember, one underlined text in hardcopy and used the underscore for italics in digital text — the asterisk was used for bold.
Okay, sure, I realize it has changed for many people. And I wouldn’t complain about that in cases where a writer says in his cover letter, "the asterisks are intended to be italics." Because it’s confusing. Sometimes asterisks = bold print and sometimes the asterisks = italics and sometimes the intent is just the asterisk. That’s why, in text submissions, I prefer the writer to use HTML tags — it’s so much less confusing for me. When I have one writer who uses the asterisk correctly and another who likes the asterisk for italics and another writer who just has an asterisk fetish, I don’t have to figure out which is which.
Anyway, back to the poem in question: You can read it in the latest issue of Gnome: the online journal of underground writing, which is now online.
Not Really Working On Anything, ‘Cuz I’m Too Busy Working Out
Published March 7th, 2010 | It occurred to me, looking at the calendar this morning, that the current issues of Gnome and The 13th Warrior Review are now officially three months overdue. People have been emailing me, asking, "what gives?" and I’m running out of excuses. Truthfully, aside from writing this blog occasionally, I’ve mostly been at the gym. I’m obese, hypertensive, with hypothyroid, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and two and a half years in remission from cancer. So my health has been my main priority as I’ve said on many occasions. That means I spend a lot of the time at the gym. I’m staying away from the ephedra diet pills, thank you very much. But I am rocking the weights and aerobics and, according to the scale at my oncologist appointment yesterday, I’ve lost sixteen pounds since Christmas. So, I’m on my way to slimming down if not quite on my way to publishing those two issues. I do, however, expect at least one of them to be online sometime before the end of the month. Maybe a hard push over the weekend will do the trick. Anyway, before launching anymore submissions my way, keep in mind that I spend two hours in the gym every day and only spend about two hours a week reading submissions.
Sometimes You Just Gotta Say WTF
Published January 9th, 2010 | Time is not you’re friend.
No, it’s not. You’ve got almighty death tugging at you at one end and Time is right there on the other end giving you a good hard shove.
What that song lyric? "Another year older and deeper in debt." Yeah, that’s about the size of it.
I had intended to publish new issues of 13thWR and Gnome, during the months of November and December 2009. Initially, I was sidetracked by my involvement in NanoWriMo — at least that was my excuse for abandoning that project. I got back to business just after Thanksgiving, after making my word count, but a few withdrawals from simultaneous submitters and other impatient contributors delayed me again. This time, I just said, "fuck it," and decided to set everything aside for the holiday, because, sometimes you just feel weary, irrelevant and utterly pointless and feel the need to reach for the Samsonite luggage and make a quick getaway.
Of course, the new year brings with it a sense of impending doom right along with all that possibility with Time and Mister Death doing the ole Texas two-Step.
So I opened my email earlier in the week to get a leg up on unfinished business and discovered a lot more submissions arrived during my two and a half week siesta than I’d anticipated. Reading submissions is a tedious job and I only have so much time to read them so . . . As it stands I have no clue when I will publish those two issues. Both are nearly done, but not quite ready to go live. And with a bunch of unrelated personal shit coming the next couple of months and this month already nearly half-over, I’m thinking about taking another indefinite break. I may not even post regularly to this blog in the near future (not that anyone cares — even thought the stats suggest otherwise, sometimes I think no one reads this blog).
Maybe I’m just depressed. Time is not my friend.
Posted in Current Events, General, Happy Horseshit, Publishing, The Writing Life, editing, ezines, random thoughts