Well, to understand that, you have to understand something about me: I don’t like to make a Big Deal out of anything.  At all.  And I like it even less when other people make a Big Deal out of something I do.  See, word got around to my well-intentioned, yet cloying family that I was a good writer, and immediately, I couldn’t go a week without some relative asking me to write things for them, to read what I was working on, &c, &c.  It became, over the course of a year, a Big Deal – and turned me off of writing forever.  Seriously, I’ve made many fitful starts at putting pen to paper (or fingers to keys) in the two decades since – and not one of them has been successful.

So please forgive me if this particular blog sputters and falters from time to time as I try to get over myself and actually produce something worth reading.