I had been hoping to ramp this thing down to an entry every three days or so, but I find that lately I’m not even getting that much done. Whether this is a long-term trend or not, only time will tell. Certainly there are a few identifiable factors:

1) Summertime. Colorado is not, I am happy to say, experiencing the heat wave currently lowering over much of the Western US and keeping its residents parked next to their swamp coolers. Hence, yours truly has been spending a great deal of time in the great American outdoors.

2) Lack of Topics. Despite possible appearances, I do not enjoy denigrating other people’s books. I would much rather tout great writing, but lately I haven’t run across very much of it. So much for the part of my blog devoted to the world of literature as a whole. As for my own little corner of that world, there is only so much I can say about work in progress without finding that it gets in the way of that work.

3) Lack of Readers. The number of hits my website gets has been pretty much stagnant for some time now, and, based on those numbers, there really aren’t that many people reading this thing. It is always possible, of course, that billions upon billions of readers have subscribed to it while bypassing my homepage. If this is the case, some of you might leave me a comment once in a way just to let me know you’re out there.

Other news:

The book proposal is, I hope, thoroughly revised, and will soon be winging its way to publishers all across midtown Manhattan.

Part 2 of Big Rock has finally gotten its arse off the ground, and is beginning to slouch its unholy way towards Bethlehem.

My raspberries are going crazy this year. Already they’ve yielded over three gallons of fruit, and their season is just getting underway. This morning I picked two quarts. The rhubarb, unfortunately, has fallen victim to the deer. Actually, I’d thought the remaining plant had finally given up the ghost. This year it came back, but just about the time the stalks got big enough to harvest, the deer discovered it. Why they leave the raspberries alone, I don’t know. The gooseberry bush continues to spread, and is finally beginning to produce enough berries to be worth picking. Not enough to make a pie, but maybe sufficient to lend some tartness to a batch of raspberry jam. Normally, that’s what the rhubarb is for. Bloody deer. The asparagus is doing alright, but is nothing to brag about. I was hoping to start harvesting this year, but after one cutting I decided to let the roots have another season to develop.