First, my apologies to Janra for falling off the face of the earth. My reading and writing took a major detour from the world of prose this summer to dwell instead in the narcissistic and nepotistic backwaters of poetry. With my attention focused on the subtleties and mechanics of meter and verse, I had little to offer a forum interested more in characters and plot. But I've learned much that I hope will be beneficial to my "other" writing endeavors - the ignored novel, the half-finished essays and all the other "projects" we all have drawers and hard-drives filled with. I've also learned a few things that I might eventually be able to turn into useful articles to post here.

But before I get into "all that", let me tell you about my summer.

I've been walking a lot. Having your driver's license revoked will do that. I've been to court three times already this summer and will probably have to return another three or four times over the next several months before my "incident" is resolved. As I mentioned here before, there was no accident, no injuries, no victims - just an anonymous tip that "the guy driving the hippie van is acting crazy" (straight from the police report), and bad luck on my part (being only two blocks from home). Ah well... story of my life.

Money has been an elusive prey this summer as well. Thanks to perfectly timed storms and a generally shitty economy, our little flea market business has performed dismally all season. Let me just say I've eaten more Ramen noodles and peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches the last few months than I've had in my entire life.

Did I mention I've been walking a lot? It's two miles to the nearest bus stop from our home, which means I walk at least four miles every day I need to take it - not an easy feat for a middle-aged drunk with a backpack full of books.

But some good has managed to find its way to our doorstep.

Thanks to my significant other's generous mother, we will be moving into a house in the next few weeks. A house with a yard and a garage even. And we get to paint the walls whatever god-awful colors we want. Technically, we'll be paying rent, but a portion of each payment goes towards purchasing the house.

I've also landed a low-paying but semi-prestigious position with the Poetry Center at my university. Imagine a lowly freshman (although a very old one) being responsible for developing all the promotional and recruiting materials for an MFA in Creative Writing program that spans four universities. I'm writing and designing the brochures, the website, everything. The scary part is that they've found little of my input or output to need "tweaking" by the pros.

As I mentioned earlier, the bulk of my summer has been spent exploring (and rediscovering) the world of poetry. I've been averaging a finished piece every two days and they're not nonsensical ramblings or collections of Hallmarkisms. To be honest, I think I'll end up publishing a book of poetry before I even come close to finishing a prose manuscript. What's interesting, though, is that the techniques I'm honing in the poetry world are directly applicable to improving my prose. I promise, Janra, that I'll submit an article on this in the near future.

Anyway, summer's almost over and school's about to kick in. I don't know how often I'll be able to participate here, but I do plan on contributing something of value to WriteOn on a semi-regular basis.

That's it for now. I feel an essay brewing somewhere that just might be appropriate to share here. I'll post it if it happens...

Sean