Star date 11/23/09: The Dawn Treader Comes Late

I've put this off for too long. For a little over two years, I've been writing a rather amphibious blog called "Literary Pursuits" in which I've carried off two identities that, at times, were not so distinct from each other. I am a writer who teaches English at Memorial University, and so I spend all summer blogging about me and my various pursuits, especially fiction writing, and then in the fall of the year I switch over to blogging about matters related to teaching. At times, it's been an uneasy alliance, as I begin to feel like the infamous Dr. Henry Jekyll who attempts to keep his darker, hidden side at bay.

Well, like Jekyll, my Hyde will no longer be bound. I begin this blog, called "Gothic Times" as a way of unleashing my thoughts about the writing life and about life in general. My musings here have nothing whatsoever to do with teaching anyone anything about life, death, writing, fate, faith, comma splices, sentence fragments, or anything to do with dead poets and writers.

And yet, I intend to talk about it all. I will have no boundaries here. If you come to this blog, whether as a former student, a non-student, an aspiring writer, or just an interested bystander--or even a disinterested bystander--you will learn nothing about anything. Not that I've tried to teach you anyway.  See there?  A sentence fragment! And I didn't try to disguise it. I didn't try to stop it or correct it. I just let it be, in all its disfigured beauty.

I have been writing fiction for a few years now and have been publishing stories and winning some awards, while I've been writing novels as well. So far, publication of a book has eluded me, but I sense a shift in the literary wind and feel that it's time I started writing about my own writing, not just other people's. More to the point, I intend to write about me as if no one was listening or reading. I will not attempt to offend anyone, nor will I attempt to avoid such offense. I write not on behalf of any university or for any particular group. I will, in short, be my naturally optimstically skeptical self.

I intend to write about whatever interests me. If it's fixes for sentence structure or musings on Robert Frost you're after, you're in the wrong place.

But if you're honestly interested, mildly or strongly or somewhere in between, in what  I do, stay tuned. I've got tons to say.

And no one can stop me.

This is mine.  This is me, no holds barred.

Gerard