One More Step…

Sunday again, and once more I’m wondering where the week went…

I can’t believe it’s been a week since I wrote my last Blog entry, but it’s true, and despite the blur of passing time, a lot has happened in the interim… Let’s see if I can itemize some of the things that have impinged upon my awareness, this past week.

First, of course, was the fact that the new Blog page opened on www.Camulod.com. I’ve been telling people to watch out for it, and suddenly there it was . . . an email from the Webmaster, telling me the page was loaded and awaiting input. Well, I wrote the piece, very tentatively because I was, and I remain, aware of how little I know about blogging, and I didn’t want to start off by doing anything egregiously uncool or stupid… And so I tried to be laid back and to divest myself of all preconceived notions about what I ought and/or ought not to write, and I just let the thoughts flow, and hey, they came out quite intelligibly and not at all awkwardly, so that was a bonus.

            I then posted the entry and waited for a reaction. And none came. Zip, zilch, nutt’n, nada and another 500 grams of assorted, multilingual clichés. And the impression began to grow in my mind that a comment-less Blog is much akin to an exercise in unbridled egoism (and no, that’s not egotism spelt wrongly. Look it up if you don’t believe me.) Fortunately, later in the week, I learned from Mark that he had not yet been able to get the “Comments” trigger to work on the blog. That was a relief, albeit short-lived, because he said he had fixed it, and still nothing happened… So if any of you have a comment to interject, please write it up and save it until the blog input zone gets fixed, and hurl it in thereafter.

            Last Monday was a Long Weekend here in Canada—Labour Day, we call it, as opposed to Labor Day south of the Border. I don’t know right now—because I’m having what is known as a Senior Moment—if it’s the same holiday in the USA, because festivals like Thanksgiving are different in Canada and the USA, so it doesn’t seem unlikely that Labo(u)r Day would be, too. [Note to Self: Check that out.] Anyway, because it was a holiday Monday, not much was going on in Canada commercially and I had to wait until Tuesday for the promised delivery of a set of new golf irons that I had ordered a month earlier—guaranteed to be delivered, customized to fit, within seven to ten business days of receipt of order. I had been apologized to profusely by representatives of the company concerned—although not in person, but via my supplier—and promised, the Friday before, that they would be shipped by air that very day and delivered First Thing Tuesday, without fail. Well, they didn’t come. They came Friday, instead, after another deluge of excuses, declarations of non-responsibility, and much feverish hand-washing and buck-passing. And when they got here, they were the wrong clubs—steel shafted, instead of the more expensive but middle-aged-user-friendly graphite shafts. I don’t know why nobody noticed, because I did at first glance. One set has silver shafts, because they are made of steel, whereas the other, made from graphite, has black shafts. Not really what you’d call hard to differentiate between… By then, of course, I was simmering up towards a rolling boil, and started asking why a multinational corporation famous for its legendary running shoes should apparently be reduced—for it certainly appeared to me that that was what had happened—to hiring shambling incompetents, congenital idiots and pathological liars to conduct their interfaces with the general (purchasing) public, when all they would need to do was equip their existing staff with suitable footwear and have them deliver their goods on foot . . . healthy relay runners could easily run, with a single package of ten golf clubs, from Toronto, Canada to B.C.’s West Coast in much less than a month. Anyway, I still have not received either my golf clubs or an adequate explanation of why the boondoggle has gone on for so long, and I’ll probably ending up advising them, in writing, as to where they should secrete the offending merchandise.

            Let’s see, what else happened this week? One of the highlights, which did much to counteract my disappointment at the lack of feedback from the blog, was an email from Mark in response to my initial blog submission, in which he identified some of his favourite blogs and provided links to them. I then spent an entire evening lost in the serpentine and astonishing world of bloggery. Talk about an intimidating experience! The sheer complexity and depth of some of the blogs I visited defy belief, and I was on the point of deciding that I have no business to be even thinking about approaching such a world, when I paused for a moment to think, realistically, about the sheer volume of time being poured into the compositions on the sites I had been perusing. My God!

            From there, then, it was but a short leap to the vantage point from which I now inspect my world. That kind of blog composition demands a total dedication of which I am simply incapable, because I already have a career and a forum (Literally, and Right Here In River City, thanks to Mark the Webmaster!) and so I can embark calmly on my blogging escapades with absolute equanimity, writing and talking about things, beyond my normal diurnal writing activities, that interest me and/or catch my attention from time to time, and hopefully sharing input and feedback with those of you out there who wish to be involved, to whatever extent. Now That’s progress…

            There’s light glimmering on the Calendar Page of the website, too, so keep watching it for information on my upcoming Book Tour of Canada and my appearances at readings, Conferences and Festivals throughout the autumn months. At the moment, we’re wrasslin’ with a bug that won’t let me enter upcoming events directly into the Appearances calendar, but we’ll grab a hold of that one soon and fix it.

            In the meantime, I have a few good URLs that might interest some of you, and I’m going to insert one of them here, just to see if it works. They’re all Canadian at this point, because that’s where I live and do most of my traveling and public appearances nowadays, but that last part is going to change quite radically, now that I have top-ranking publishers for my new Knight Templar trilogy in the USA and throughout the UK and Europe. In the meantime, you’ll find information here on the fabulous Surrey International Writers Conference, which every year attracts the likes of Diana Gabaldon, Terry Brooks, Anne Perry, Michael Slade, Elizabeth Engstrom and John Saul, along with top flight agents like Don Maass of DMLA, New York, and editors from the major publishing houses, not to mention film and television producers and directors. You’ll find it at: www.siwc.ca. I’ll add others later, as my confidence increases.

            Now, talking about time spent blogging, I’ve been sitting here for two hours. Ciao!