In Which a Fourteenth Bloggiversary is Noted

In the word of Seamus Heaney’s Beowulf, “So.”

Fourteen years ago, at the Mad Dog’s urging, and driven by my need to distract myself from The Big Noise, I. . . well, I started writing again. I didn’t really think of it that way at the time, but that’s how it turned out. I kind of figured it would be like the diaries I attempted to keep when I was a kid (or maybe my efforts to lose weight), petering out after a few days, or perhaps a week or two, but here we are.

Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear:

As the title suggests, I’m a professor at a small college. My specialty is medieval literature. I’m 44 years old. My politics are best described as “small-l libertarian”; that is, I see government as a necessary evil, but both those words matter. This makes me rather unusual in academia, and particularly in the humanities. I’m also passionate about rock and roll — particularly garage and psychedelia, but anything loud and fast will get my attention. In keeping with that, I play drums, and have since I was a pre-teen.

I’m happily married to Mrs. Mondo, and the doting father of The Spawn of Mondo, a gifted teen girl who is into many of the same geekeries as her dad. My best friend, Maj. Mad Dog, is a lawyer in the U.S. military who is my complete opposite on political matters.

In addition to my professional reading, I spend lots of time reading genre fiction, especially noir/crimefic, 50s-60s sf, and fantasy of the same approximate vintage. At various points in my life, I’ve been a DJ, stand-up comic, bar band musician, teacher, magazine editor, music critic, architecture critic, advertising copywriter, tire and battery salesman, and convenience store janitor. I’ve been paid for all of these. I’ve also done other stuff for which I didn’t get paid, including the writing of 1.5 unpublished novels.

I spent my childhood south of the Ohio River, but really tend to think of myself as a native of Suburbia.

Some, but not all, of these points remain the same. I’m still a professor at the same small college, but where I was a rookie Associate Prof when I started, I’m now in my tenth year as a full Professor. While I still teach (and enjoy) medieval lit, I now see myself principally as a creative writer. I’m now 58 years old. If anything, I’m even more skeptical of politics than I was back then, and try to have as little to do with it as I can. I’m still passionate about rock and roll, and I still think of myself as a drummer, although I haven’t played in a few months, and haven’t performed publicly in several years (and my knee surgery in seventeen days will likely put things on hold for a while longer.)

Mrs. Mondo and I are midway through our 31st year of marriage, and look forward to going into the grandparent biz in a few years. The Spawn is now in her late twenties and is happily engaged to a lovely young woman, with an eye on tying the knot within the year and helping us into the aforementioned grandparent biz within a few years of that. The Mad Dog has retired from the military, has married the Mad Doc, and now lives in Tennessee, where he continues to dabble in politics, typically of a sort of which I disapprove (but as I indicated earlier, nearly all sorts of politics these days earn my disapproval.)

I’m still at 1.5 unpublished novels, but they’re now made up of three different ones at half-done each. My finished one became a twenty-year overnight success story, seeing publication in 2013 and getting reissued in 2017. If you don’t have a copy, you can buy it here. In the meantime, however, I seem to have found a metier as a writer of short fiction, and it’s my hope that I’ll have some things to say about that sooner, rather than later (fingers crossed). This, of course, is in keeping with my lifelong habit of finding the least remunerative ways of doing interesting things (see also teaching at a small college.)

I remain well to the south of the Ohio River, and have now lived in Mondoville longer than I’ve lived anywhere else in my life, but I still think of myself as a suburbanite, and occasionally entertain brief dreams of returning to Kentucky, ideally near my beloved Wildcats. (This is unlikely, however, as the grandparent-oriented retirement plan takes precedence. When you don’t have a lot of family, you want to be close to the ones who are around.)

The blog has allowed me to meet and develop connections a number of interesting folks, both virtually and in meatspace, and while I’m not arrogant enough to think that I’m scintillating to hang with, I do appreciate each and every one of you, whether you’re a regular reader or just drop in from time to time. I guess it’s a good thing that for a change, I’ve stuck with something.

As is my habit, I’ll close with a bit of music. The name isn’t right, but the celebratory aspect works, I think.

See you soon!