15 Years of Writing in One Short Blog Post

When WordPress notified me of my 15th anniversary of Dysfunctional Literacy, I was almost ready.  I missed my tenth anniversary five years ago because there was a lot of crazy stuff going on in my personal life.  Most of the crazy stuff has resolved itself (not necessarily in the best ways possible, but still resolved) and has been replaced by other crazy stuff that isn’t nearly so crazy.  At least it hasn’t been as crazy recently.  And hopefully won’t be again for a while.

I like the variety of stuff that I’ve written on my blog over the last 15 years.  Even though my writing style is somewhat (or very) limited, I haven’t limited myself to one type of blog post.  I don’t only write book reviews.  I write stories (that are mostly true). I write social commentary.  I write about comic books and comic strips.  And of course, I write book reviews, but now my reviews focus on old books because that’s what I like to read now (for some reason).  The only thing I don’t write is poetry. 

I respect poetry, though.  I respect poetry so much that I don’t try writing it. 

I wouldn’t say that the articles that I mention below are my greatest hits, but these MIGHT represent the variety of stuff that I write about.

Here’s the first segment from my first blog serial called “Long Story.” It’s about a long story that I wrote in high school.  I originally wrote it (the blog serial “Long Story,” NOT the long story that I wrote in high school) in 2012, but this is an edit from 2020 with a link to the original.

Long Story: Teachers With Unfortunate Last Names 

Here are a few other much shorter blog serials (if that’s your thing):

The Tale of the Almost-Expired Milk  

Childhood Ghost Story- The Prologue

Awkward Moments in Dating: The Homepage

*****

Here’s a stand alone blog post. Even in 2013, I was making fun of George R.R. Martin not finishing A Game of Thrones.  Haha!

Ender’s Game vs. The Hunger Games vs. A Game of Thrones 

Here’s my novel The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy.  Yeah, I say it’s a romantic comedy, but it’s from a guy’s point of view, so sometimes people don’t get the point.  Most romantic comedies are about a woman with a chaotic life who falls for an extremely attractive man with an orderly life (or some variation).  The Sunset Rises is instead about an average guy with an orderly life who falls for a really attractive woman with a chaotic life, and then hilarious chaos ensues. Of course, there’a a lot more to it than that, but I don’t like relying on spoilers, especially spoilers for something that I’ve written.

Looking back, maybe it was a bad idea for a novel, but I like trying bad ideas sometimes, and I really like my one novel.  That’s it.  That’s the only novel I’m ever going to write.  I’m no James Patterson. 

Some people my age get nostalgic about the past, but there’s a lot of stuff that I’m glad has changed.  Whenever I get anti-nostalgic, which really doesn’t happen very often, I write one of my Old Things That Are Tough To Explain articles.  Here’s where you can find most of them.  

About ten years ago, my older brother found the original drawings of a bunch of comic strips that he had published in our local small town newspaper in the early 1980s. His dream at the time was to be a syndicated comic strip creator, but stuff like that is a long shot for people like us with little money and no connections. Once my brother got married and started raising his kids, other things became more important to him (we all know the story).

When I ran out of his original Calloway the Castaway comic strips, I then started running his unpublished (and sometimes unfinished) Dummo Mouse cartoons. Even though the last of the Dummo Mouse cartoons aren’t inked, they’re my favorites, but I’ve slowed down posting them because I want to give each one a better introduction than what I’ve normally been writing for them.

For some of my older brother’s comic strips from the 1980s, see…

The Lost Adventures of “Calloway the Castaway” Episode 1 

Dummo Mouse and Friends: The Intro

There are a lot more categories and topics (such as Dysfunctional Book Reviews and comic books ) that I’ve covered on this blog over the years, but my title claimed that this was going to be a short blog post, so I should hold myself to that. If you like what you’ve seen so far, look around some more, and if you really like what you’ve read… buy my book! I mean… ahem… if you really like what you’ve read, please buy my book (but only if you can afford it in today’s economy).