I know: I haven’t updated for a long time. I’ve been so busy, had so many deadlines to meet. I’m going to try to get back into the habit of writing here again. I want to get back to updating every night.

Tonight, I’m just going to post a few pictures from the talk I gave on Monday. It was at the Otis Library in Norwich, Connecticut. I was invited to speak as part of the Jim Lafayette Memorial Series of Writers of Science Fiction and Fantasy, which is a wonderful speaker series in memory of Jim Lafayette, a young man who was a science fiction and fantasy fan and writer, and who unfortunately died much too young. It’s so wonderful that this speaker series has been set up in his honor. Previous speakers had included writers such as John Crowley, Greer Gilman, and Kaaron Warren, so I felt tremendously honored to be invited.

And the library did a wonderful job of publicizing the event. They posted it prominently on the library website, and once I got to the library, there was a poster in the window, and a display in the lobby, and even a picture on a monitor in the lobby. Look and see!

Here is the poster:

(Those shadows are me and my friend the scholar and writer Faye Ringel, who had invited me to participate in the speaker series.)

And here is the display:

And here is the picture up on the monitor:

And finally, here is a picture of me up at the lectern, just before the reading started:

This was taken by my friend and fellow writing group member Claire Cooney. I didn’t take any pictures myself, but I’m happy to report that we had a full room.

On Sunday evening, I drove down to Connecticut with Faye and Greer. I spent the night as Faye’s guest, and stayed up far too late making final adjustments to my talk. But I needed to interest and entertain for about 45 minutes, and you know, that’s a hard thing to do! On Monday morning, I went through the talk again, and in the afternoon we printed it out at the library. Then it was time for the presentation, which went very well. I had dinner with Faye, Greer, and Claire, and then took the train from New London to Boston, arriving about midnight. I hadn’t been on a train in a long time, and it was so wonderful riding on one again — riding by small towns in Connecticut and Massachusetts through the late summer night. I love the sound of trains . . .

Since then, I’ve been working, working, working. I have a short story due by the end of the month, and classes starting next week. Nevertheless, I will try to keep updating this blog, because I do have things coming out that I want to let you know about. I need to update the website as well, because there’s more of my fiction and non-fiction online now, and I need to provide links.

But for now — back to work!

(I’ve been asked if I can post a copy of the talk. I need to make some revisions so it will read as an essay rather than something I presented verbally, but yes — I will be posting a copy soon!)