This blog is dedicated to John Scalzi. He is the reason I am writing this and as such deserves some of the blame for what I may soon be inflicting upon you, my dear readers. For those of you who do not know of John Scalzi, I direct you to his blog Whatever and his Wikipedia page. There you will find more info on him than I could ever hope to catalog here.

Scalzi is an accomplished professional writer (by his own account he makes a good living at it). I discovered him via Red Shirts and continued on through the Old Man’s War series. If you like sci-fi you probably already know of him. I highly recommend him. His books and eBooks are available at all of the usual places.

In addition to writing sci-fi and non-fiction, he is one of the web’s earliest bloggers. His blog Whatever has been active since 1998. In it he pretty much writes about whatever he wants (hence the name) – using it as a tool to hone his writing skills. He also offers frequent advice to would-be writers as summarized in his books:

• You’re Not Fooling Anyone When You Take Your Laptop to a Coffee Shop: Scalzi on Writing (2007),
• Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded: A Decade of Whatever, 1998–2008 (2008),
• and the upcoming Mallet of Loving Correction.

I highly recommend these books to anyone considering a career in writing and to anyone else with a sense of humor.

In his writings, Scalzi repeatedly recommends blogging as a way of perfecting one’s writing skills and creating a following. I am taking his advice to heart. Although I have a lucrative day job, I have fantasies of one day becoming a writer. I use the word fantasies because terms like hopes, dreams, plans, etc. are way too concrete. My fantasies of writing do not even include the “paid” part. At this point in time I am curious to know if anything I write is interesting to anyone else. I don’t know if I will have the time or the fortitude to make the time to write on a daily basis. Heck, I am posting this a day late as it is. Be that as it may, I am jumping head-first into the blogosphere. I hope it’s not too cold.