I realized after doing the first Sally the Sleuth that doing this right would require me to rescan the images. I understand that the original run of Sally was republished about ten years back, which frankly seems like a waste of paper. On her first pass, Sally was something akin to Chester the Molester--a comic strip for a porn magazine. They're never really all that good. Sally was the first, which only makes her slightly less dubious. Why Sally should be reprinted and no one will touch the much more worthy The Fox and The Crow is just one of those cruel twists of fate. In any case, our next post will be from Sally's ill fated 1949 revival.
It is my hope that the passing holidays have recharged your love for all mankind or at least gave you a few moments of rest. I personally ran around like a chicken with my head cut off for a week, but that's my problem. Amongst the activities occupying my vacation time was helping a pal of mine edit his new novel. That was actually very productive, from a writing standpoint. Nothing quite sharpens the mind more than the paring down process. At the least it reminds you to be more spartan in your own prose. I also found time to ship off what very well may be my last short story submit ever. All of this writing-like activity made me perhaps rethink my retirement from the short story field.
Sadly, the writing-like activity took up a minority of my time. Although I am essentially beholding to none, I had let certain tasks pile up over the last few months. (Months is an understatement.) Working full time will do that. (The universe is filled with people who turn off when they get home?) Having started a new job, my attention was focused elsewhere. (The world halts because of a change in employment.) Before that, I was working nights and found it difficult to get a handle on certain tasks. (Tasks the 'disabled' refer to as activities of daily living.) I am lazy, messy and disorganized. (Bingo!) Certain issues had reached critical mass and it was high time I got after them. (Was shamed into action.) At any rate, this ate up quite a bit of what I had hoped would be free time. (Cleaning up after myself for the first time in three years, that is.)
One of the tasks I undertook was to de-pack-rat myself. I am what they call a "saver." (Slob.) That, and as a pulp fiction historian, I maintain something of an archive of research materials. (Slob with a magazine collection.) Much of this activity took place in a storage area. (In a bunker with my litter, where I belong.)
May I take this opportunity to warn my fellow "savers" out there that your precious stuff has two invariable fates: it winds up with indifferent relatives who will either trade it for cash or dumpster it in disgust. And the more stuff you have, the less likely said indifferent relatives will be to sorting wheat from chaff. Therefore if you truly are the loving custodian of objects traveling through time, the less stuff you have, the more likely indifferent relatives are to sell it for drug money than to simply ship it to the land fill. Leave someone a fully restored Peirce Arrow and you are an eccentric collector and a wise investor. Leave someone 26 tube radios and a disassembled Pierce Arrow all piled together in a garage and you are the uncle whose garage required three dumpsters to clear out. I kid you not. If you want to save your stuff, have less of it.
Without touching the magazine collection, I tossed out 800 pounds of unadulterated garbage. Some of it, such as the late issue 78s, LPs and toaster oven I might have been able to ebay, but I really wanted it gone now. Now is a good time. Now is a good time to make something go. It's not my new motto, but it is a good transient mindset.
I am now even considering how many even semi-valuable things I really wish to keep keeping. It's a tough thought for a "saver", but my time with some of these things may have come to an end. Time to let someone else enjoy them. In the end, it's all the same if I leave my indifferent relations cash. That I know they can relate to.
Not that I have anything all that valuable. (Nor am I planning on checking out anytime soon.) But these things do no good locked away where neither I nor anyone else can enjoy them. Putting things up for sale on the website might not be a bad idea, going forward. Other than that, I have no ideas for monetizing either this blog nor Hil-Gle.com in the near future.
(I also found about six topics to present here while I was banging around in my own crud.)
Looking back on my stated intentions for both the blog and the website, I would say that I have accomplished most of my objectives. This is a writer's website. Part of my objective was to build a platform. Write about things you know in an interesting way. So far, so good. When I look back on what I had hoped to accomplish on this website and blog for last year however, it seems I only got around to about half of it. Many pages are still not on this server. My writing frequency has not been quite what I wanted. As opposed to coming up with new objectives, my direction for this year will be to complete what I failed to last year. Beyond adding pages, I have a number of pages that I need to correct. I am anticipating upping my pace a bit come April.
There are two different ways to build a platform. One is, quite simply, to follow my writing mantra: Write shit people want to read. The second is to write with some frequency. People check out things more when there are new things to check out. It is my intention to build this platform further by doing both. One of the good things about this medium is that you can easily gauge what people are most interested in. Beyond pulp fiction history, the most popular draws to this blog are the fiction pieces, the commentary and the mash ups. I will not be posting on politics or the financial system any further. And I do intend to stay on the magazine beat. But for the most part the focus will be on increasing the blog's entertainment value. It seems the best path.
The biggest change is that I intend there to be more of it.
Next: Sally the Sleuth rides again and Another Bad Pulp Comic Strip.
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