Assorted Nuts

Happy New Year All!

Sorry about the gap in posting the last few days, its another one of those times at work. The holidays are always especially busy for us, with the Christmas rush piling up the days before and all the customers making returns the days afterword. The New Years hits, which isn't much of a holiday anymore when you have to report to work at 3 or 4 in the morning to do counts and inventory. Plus I changed my schedule up this month to put me on several Sundays to address some operational concerns I have been having with the store. Not really looking forward to that, but what are you gonna do?

Another bit that has come along is the fact that I have picked up a bit of a second job. It's not much really, just a couple of hours every Saturday night working for my local comic book store. I work from 4pm until 9pm only, mostly there to help out talking to customers, making occasional phone calls, though I may pick up some register work if I am lucky and I am there long enough. I usually do volunteer work for them a few times a year, whether helping with moves or on Free Comic Book Day, I have a pretty good relationship with the guys there. They asked me if I would be willing to help out on this one shift a week since and I readily agreed. Honestly, its pretty fun. I Get to talk comic books to people and I really like the staff down there. Besides its basically keeping me in free comics and that is something you will never hear me argue about. I get to keep doing it until they decide they don't need me anymore. Hopefully, I can go a little while and stockpile up.

Overall I was pretty happy with the blog output last month, I got 3 chapters of Noir Story posted, plus a Christmas piece done. I only missed one chapter posting but I at least made up for it with a good selection of poetry. Plus all of my columns, a first in the last few months. This month will see both regular installments of the Word Balloon and The Rewind, plus my Year in Review Posts, looking at the Top 5 and Bottom 5 films of 2009. I will preview the new year with my Top 10 films in 2010 as well. January should see Noir Story draw to a close, as well as kick start a move to Flash Fiction on every Wednesday with my long belabored new serial, my sequel to Under a Dead Sun. I am really excited for this story as I have been hatching out the first few chapters the past month in my notebooks, as well as formulating the overall story over the past three months. I don't have all the kinks worked out yet, most specifically a good enough climax to top the train battle from the last one, but I do have several ideas that I didn't use in the first story that will see light here. I also have 3 different characters that I am pretty excited to start writing. I just hope I can match the level of fun I had before. Look for new Dead Sun to start in about 2 weeks.

You will also have a few poems if I am lucky, and a review of Avatar and the Princess and the Frog this week sometime. Thanks for sticking with me through 2009, I promise to try to do better in 2010. Thanks.

End of Line.
Gerrad!