Dear Readers,

Another semester has come to a close. I haven’t had much time to blog over the past few months. I taught seven courses this semester (my contracted 5 and 2 overloads). On top of that, there were meetings, office hours, and working on revised drafts of my novel (now in the copy editing phase).  Now I have a month off, and I plan to spend it playing Red Dead Redemption 2 and wrapping up my novel copy edits. I think I can manage to do both.

In other news, I moved into a new office at the college this week. When I got hired full time, there wasn’t any available office space, and so I had a cubicle. It was a nice, big cubicle, and I had it all to myself. But when they told me that I could have a real office after a professor retired, well, I leapt at the chance. I got set up yesterday, and now it resembles a museum of fire helmets. Some mine and some antique ones. Students don’t generally make use of office hours though, and I spend ten hours a week staring at the phone waiting for it to ring, or gazing at the door waiting for a student to appear. When neither happens, I wander around the office suite and pester my co-workers.

A couple of weeks ago, we (myself, my wife, and a friend) went down to Galveston for Dickens on the Strand, an annual Victorian Era festival. My friend and I donned Yankee blue for the trip. We had a lot of fun. So much fun, in fact, that my wife had to drive us home! There were lots of people dressed in Victorian clothing. We even got our picture taken with a suffragette! The food was great, as was the beer. Next year, I’m planning on going as a 19th Century firefighter.

Apologies for the short post, but the Old West beckons. I’ll see you on the trail, pilgrim. And look forward to another post within a few days about my favorite Western fiction.

L.H.