Okay, this technology stuff is starting to grow on me.

I admit it, I'm quite the Luddite, contemptuous of the new and improved when the old and reliable seems to work just fine. I've said it before, I'm a son of the Space Age, this computer stuff often leaves me feeling like a caveman watching from the shadows as his neighbor makes fire.

It was Sherron, my wife, who insisted it was time to make the leap to the internet. Start my own blog, use cyberspace's vast networking capabilities to spread the word on my odd canon of work. We'd tried once before but the technology was too convoluted and I couldn't get the effect I was looking for. Funny what a difference a few years make, at least in the computer world. Blogs these days are easy, user friendly, attractive to look at...and proliferating like flies. Once again, I'm slow on the draw and trying to play catchup.

I'm impressed by some of the people I've met--thanks to my home internet connection I can reach out to folks who share similar interests in books and pop culture and never mind that they live in the Blue Mountains of Australia or east India. That astonishes me. This huge community I now have access to.

And the new technologies have also allowed me to bypass the moribund and increasingly irrelevant publishing industry and present my work directly to readers without the necessity for agents, editors, publishers. For over two decades I have been looking for a platform for my work, even started my own imprint (Black Dog Press). But self-publishing is expensive and time-consuming and with the indie bookstores disappearing and corporate bookselling taking over, self-published titles are going to have a hard go of it.

But now I can have my blog and publish anything I want on it--reviews, rants, short stories, essays and, yes, novels. Just loaded my first full-length book on my site this past week. So Dark the Night is a supernatural mystery/occult thriller featuring two private investigators who only work from dusk 'til dawn. They draw their clientele from "Shades", people who work and live by night; as a result, many of their cases are strange, uncanny, downright weird. So Dark the Night is an homage to cult movies, TV and books. It's a combination of Raymond Chandler, Val Lewton and H.P. Lovecraft (if you can ponder such a warped hybrid).

So I can publish my book, talk about my book, talk to authors who've written something similar, hear from readers...yup, this internet stuff shows some definite promise. Thanks to my wife, I've begun the process of exploring the capabilities (and limits) of cyberspace and affiliated technologies. It's still hard slogging and I'm often left raging in befuddlement and frustration...but this son of Apollo is gradually becoming more conversant and comfortable in the virtual universe. Taking small steps and seeing vast, new vistas opening up before me. Not daunted or intimidated by the diversity and sheer scale of what I'm seeing, but encouraged and inspired by the imagination and enterprise in evidence all around.