publishing

It’s Cold in PA as Another Year is Coming to an End

~ John Loraine ~ 19 Comments


It is getting cold here in PA, and even in this early December, we all knew that winter was here to stay. At night the temperature goes as low as the early twenties, and it takes about ten minutes to warm up my nineteen-year-old Mercedes in the morning. I fucking hate this weather and these low temperatures, and I cannot stand being cold all the fucking time. Who can love this kind of weather anyway? The holiday spirit is in the air right now, and a little snow would make the magic work. But as soon as we finish celebrating New Year, I want fucking summer. I like to see the good old happy, warm, and humid days again. I want to go to the beach and get sunburned. I want a cold beer in my hand and to wear my shorts every day. My shit’s out of luck for the next three to four months. And since I’m stuck here, I will have to wait until mid-April for the nice weather to come around. Well, I have patience. I wanted to summarize this year and analyze what it has been for me, what I have done or accomplished, and what went to shit in the past year. It’s been my little tradition to write some sort of year-end reflection and set myself up for the new 2023 year of the Lord.

I don’t have too many complaints about 2022. It always could’ve been better, but I have nothing to complain about retrospectively. Whatever happened, happened, and what was lost was lost. I’ve tried my best to stay on top of my shit, but it wasn’t always easy. Nothing is easy when you’re an adult. Nothing is easy when you’re a parent. Nothing is and will be any fucking easier in the future, either. This is life, and we are here to live it. If we are no longer around, somebody else will have that privilege instead. So, it just means that I shouldn’t take anything for granted, and I should be happy to open my eyes in the morning every day and close my eyes at night, knowing that I have a chance to live another day. How I spent that time is my fucking problem. Was there anything I could do differently? Of course. We are all humans, and we love to fuck things up for ourselves and then feel sorry about that. I don’t have too many regrets in general. Maybe because I am a selfish asshole? Or maybe because I am just too fucking pumped to be who I am and to live the life that I do? One thing that keeps me going and makes me happy is that I am not stuck in one spot. I always kept on moving. The pace doesn’t matter, multi-tasking is the fucked up corporate buzzword that I fucking grown to hate, and the movement in life, as well as the movement of our bodies, means life. So I was moving around a lot, at least I’ve tried, and some things came to fruition while others didn’t. Well, will have to deal with all that shit next year. We’ll have another twelve months of surprises and bullshit.

The beginning of 2022 was rough. It was fucking cold then as well, and I have been cold and stressed out and busy at work, getting used to a new job. I landed a decent job with decent pay, and my family didn’t have shit to worry about. I think that’s a win-win. I had to struggle a lot, though, and then the stress was too overwhelming, and then the depression came in, and I had to meditate like a fucking monk to keep my head above the water. The good thing is that it worked. Meditation always does the trick. Gotta love that shit. How simple and how powerful and liberating it is! A few months into the year, I went down with a fucking flu. Flu, the one and only, the long-forgotten beautiful flu, came knocking at my door and knocked me on my ass for a couple of days. I thought that shit died when Covid came around. I was mistaken. It came back stronger than anything. I hadn’t had that kind of fever for years. It all passed. I recovered. I am strong, even when I am not. This wasn’t my time to see the other side. I had another chance. I am one lucky motherfucker.

The war in Ukraine was the most unfortunate and depressing event this year. It began in late February, and as I write this, the bombs are still flying over Ukraine like seagulls in the blue sky, destroying the infrastructure, killing innocent people, and turning that place into hell on Earth. In my earlier blog post, I have written about my feelings and thoughts about this war, so I will not rehash it here again. It tears my heart to see my homeland going through all this today after going through so much shit in its history. It was a major fucking shock, not just in my life but for people in Ukraine and worldwide. How dare these fucking russians? Who allowed them to behave like that? Who can stop these crazy fucks? Why is the world so fucking unresponsive and afraid to step in and kick their little shitty drunken asses? The everyday peace of Ukraine is being destroyed and ruined, and people have returned to the dark ages. Literally, the dark ages, because now the energy infrastructure has been impacted, and people sit in their homes without heat, electricity, and internet, just fucking waiting on another day, just fucking waiting for this shit to be over already. My dear cousin has lost his life in this fucking war. There goes another close relative death in our family and another significant loss in my personal life. I hope his and all others’ lives were not lost for nothing. I hope that Ukraine will win this war and will bloom again.

Somebody once said you couldn’t repeat the past. They were full of shit. I did repeat the past in the best way possible. Florida is my spiritual home. Since I first visited that place, I have felt completely in love with it. There are so many great memories and great trips down there that I live and breathe to return any time I can. My family went to Florida in May and stayed there for an entire month at the same place we were last year. Everything was the same, if not better. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I thought I was living in a dream. The dream came true. I was so excited to be there again. I was so happy to go to the beach every day and enjoy the nice warm weather, walk on the whitest sand and watch the most beautiful sunsets while drinking my beer and smoking my cigarettes at the beach, thinking about life, listening to some great tunes, watching my family happy around me enjoying themselves. There is nothing better than that. These moments are worth living for. These moments are worth all the fucking money. These moments are worth twenty hours of car ride one way. These moments were so great that nothing else compares and nothing else satisfies as much.

I was happy to wake up early in the morning and start my days with my morning coffee while writing, which I kept doing every fucking day while there. The writing came down smoothly. After that, I drove to the beach for my morning run. I ran on the beach barefoot, listening to my music, the ocean’s waves and seagulls, the sun in my face, and the ocean breeze in my head. I was free and happy at once. I found my new spiritual home. I found the place where I wanted to live forever, and once there, I wouldn’t even want to go anywhere else. The place where I want my ashes to be scattered into the ocean so I can be there forever. Fuck the alligators and snakes and hurricanes. That place has so much beauty with the perfect climate, the bluest ocean, the good happy vibes, and the brightest sun ever. That fucking sun can cure cancer. That sun heals. These sunsets are unbelievable and worth watching every fucking day. They are just priceless. I am going back to Florida again next year for sure.

On the family side of the business, things have also been busy. The little one grows fast. He learns things fast as well, and looking at him now, and I wonder how smart this little fellow is for his age. I have been a moron for the most part of my life, and he’s already brilliant at three. I look forward to seeing what the future holds for him and us. I spend more time together with my son now. I always try to spend time with him no matter what, but this year, especially once I’ve settled with the new job, my wife is busy getting her education done, and we are handing out together like two great bodies. I love to see him smile and laugh and play with me. I love to see him develop and become a person. He’s already the best person I’ve ever known at three years of age. I am such a fortunate father to have a son like that.

The best thing about becoming a parent is that nothing and nobody matters as much as your child, and everything and everybody else can go fuck themselves. This is the secret power of a parent if you ever wonder how in the fuck they can handle raising their kids. They don’t give a fuck, that’s why. They have much more important things on their minds and real problems like raising new humans to worry about rather than freaking out about what other people think or say. Fuck other people. I cherish every moment I spend together with my son. I try to be there for him, play with him, and make him a happy child. I want to be his best friend. I know this will not last forever. He will grow up one day. He will change. He will not walk by me, following me around the house with every step. He will become an adult with his own problems and worries. The father figure will move down the line and maybe even stay there forever unless I do my job right.

Now about writing. I always have so much to say about writing, but my writing process could be more consistent. I have my moments where I was dedicated and focused and inspired and creative, and this shit was pouring out of me, and then I have plenty of downtime or no time for writing at all. Some days it felt like I don’t even know what the fuck to write about. But that’s the resistance. Once I am on it, I am on it, and the writing flows.

My foremost priority since late last year was to publish my second book. I had this idea in my head for about two years now, but, man, it took so much time to finally, piece by piece, get it done and be over with. The book was meant to be a collection of everything I’ve written and posted on my blog. So-called “Writer’s Blog” book. I was working on editing and rewriting a lot of material, and many changes needed to be made. I began editing early in the year and only finished by mid-November. I had to polish everything and make it shine for the book. I think I did a pretty damn good job with that. I am proud of finally getting this second book out of my system and into the literature world. I had my closure. Let that bird fly.

It was a heavy lift for me, editing everything I’ve written and published on the blog over the last three years, plus writing new stuff and regularly posting on my blog. But, at the end of the day, I did it. I fucking did it. My second self-published book “Nicetown” went for sale in the Kindle store on December fourth. The paperback is coming out soon. I need to invest in online promotion and advertising through my media channels. Who knows, maybe, this book will do something. I am hopeful. But if not, then fuck it. There is a novel in process and several other writing project ideas in my head. The hold-off is just me. I need to sit down and start working again.

I renewed my Bluehost contract and blog domain for another three years. It wasn’t fucking cheap, but I thought this fucking thing kept me writing all these years, and it was proven to be working for me. So, I will be there for at least another three years. I have also recently started my Substack page and will post all new material there. Substack seems to be the way to go. It is a new, more modern way of blogging that removes the pain in the ass of building and maintaining your own website and distributing your content. Plus, all the cool kids are there. This could be another potential to get my audience, whoever they might be. I don’t get much of anything by just running my blog. I do need to acquire some audience and write for them. I mean, I always write for myself first, but it is always better when you have a group of fans looking forward to reading your next shit. I am sure they are somewhere out there. I would’ve been willing to read some new, raw, authentic writing from a writer who doesn’t give a fuck. It is hard to find anything like that anymore these days because everyone is afraid to speak out and write open-mindedly without sugarcoating anything or being too safe, trying to appease the audience and not get canceled. A lot of people just blindly went woke. It may be about time to take a little nap for them.

As I said, this 2022 was decent, much better than the last two years, and I hope for an even better 2023. I don’t know what the future holds. I don’t know what the new year will bring, but I do know that I don’t and can’t stop for anything. I must keep moving forward, work on my writing, create new content, and get some life. We only get one chance at life, so why in the fuck would I stay humble and not try new and different things? We all have to get some life before it ends. Nobody knows when that time will come around, but we all sure as fuck know that it will come eventually. There are no sequels. I need to set larger goals for myself. I mean, regardless of how shitty life can become and how busy I can get with the daily chores, I am always happy when I write. I am always satisfied when I can put out some great work. Great, in my understanding. I am not shooting for a Pulitzer Price; let me make that clear.

So, I am ready for a new fucking year. I have a little plan to go after, and I will be working my ass off. I know that the minute that clock strikes midnight on the first, the shit might go haywire. No magic happens in a new year unless we create it for ourselves. Unless we work towards getting something for ourselves and work hard to accomplish something, whatever it is. Sometimes even small victories can make your day. Sometimes even a small thing can be a major turning point. So, happy New 2023 Year! Don’t get fucked up too much. The date will change on the calendar, but all your bullshit will remain unless you decide to change something. Cheers to all of you, free people of this fair country, and let’s be kind to one another, open-minded too.

My New Book Release

~ John Loraine ~ 12 Comments


It’s been a while since I wrote anything here on my blog. I have a good reason. I’ve been busy editing and self-publishing my second book called “Nicetown.” That’s a good excuse, right? Publishing a second book is a great thing to do if you’re a writer, and it feels like a very fulfilling task. I’ve invested in this book for a very long time. The idea came to me about two years ago, and it took all that time until last week to actually publish this motherfucker. Well, it takes what it takes, and now this book will be out there in the world on the digital Amazon bookshelf for as long as Amazon will last. And I think that beast will outlive all of us.

The book I am talking about, “Nicetown,” is a collection of stories and poems, both fictional and autobiographical. These are all the stories I’ve been working on for the last five years. It is a random collection of stories I’ve written at different points in my life, mainly about my life and the shit I was going through at the time. There is a bit of a theme in that book based on my personal experiences, letting go of two jobs, driving for Uber for a living, trying to become a writer, struggling and eventually making it all work, becoming a father, and raising a family. This book covers a lot of topics and subjects. Some of them are series, and some are just random shit that I thought would be worthwhile to include in the book. There are some decent poems in this book as well. I think my poetry has improved over the years, and there is a lot of interesting and deep stuff readers might enjoy and appreciate. My first book, “My Poems, My Soul,” was a collection of early poetry. Mostly very mean and depressing poems written by a young wanna-be poet and writer, trying to write like Bukowski and suffering through everyday life, trying to find a meaning of it all. But these poems sound immature and naive in a way, even pretentious. They are essential in my writing life because this is where it all began. This is where it all happened. This is what I’ve been going through over the years, trying to fit my life into a poem. Poems in my latest book, though, are more mature and serious. I am taking it all to the next level here. I am happy about that material and am glad they got their new life in this book.

So how this book came to be? I’ve been writing and posting my stories and poems on my blog for about two years at the time, and approaching the second anniversary, I wanted to do something special. I thought about collecting and publishing everything I posted on the blog into a new book. The original name was “Writing Blog.” I started editing the material for the book, and I couldn’t get myself to finish it. There was always something in a way. It took too much time and effort. I felt fucking lazy to do it. Life got in the way. A lot of changes in my personal life indeed. So I had a plan, but I wasn’t going to follow it for some time. Eventually, in early 2022, I decided to finally get it done. It took me ten months to finish what I had planned, as usual, with multiple interruptions. Fortunately, I finished editing by late October, and this massive stone was off my chest.

There are a lot of stories based in and about Philadelphia and my life and my fictional character’s life, based in Philadelphia. I thought having this book framed around this town would be a great idea. This is my adopted hometown. I lived here for half of my life. So why the fuck not? The name Nicetown means what it sounds like it means. I decided to call this book a Nicetown sarcastically. There is a neighborhood in Philadelphia called Nicetown, and nothing is nice about it. Philadelphia is known to be a City of Brotherly Love. Based on my experience, it has anything but love. So many stories in the book are about getting lost and finding yourself. It is about making shit work, finding your purpose, finding the right way, getting lost, making a living, surviving, raising a family, struggling, and so on. At the end of the day, all the puzzles came together. The stories, the poems, the book title, and the themes inside the book all make perfect sense. They are part of me. They are part of my life. They are part of who I was and whom I became.

It all began mid-2017 when I was let go of my first job. I was lucky then, and I had a new job right after. That new job didn’t last for too long either, and I was fired for the second time in about four months. Fuck. Where do you go from here? I went to drive for Uber. Something that at one point felt scary and liberating, on the one hand, has become my curse for the next eight months and counting, on the other. I had no luck finding a new place for a while, so Uber became my primary source of income. I thought then this was my opportunity to become a writer and write all the time as much as I wanted. But this was a very short-lived feeling. The more time passed, the less money remained in my bank account, and driving for Uber was the only option to keep afloat. And after driving for fifteen hours a day, I had no fucking energy or creative juice to write anything. It all lasted for about eight months until I found a job at a company and industry which I fucking hated the most, but they needed me, and I needed the money and something to put on my resume, so it all began again. The short series of stories, “My Shit’s Out of Luck,” is all about that. There are also a lot of fiction and other stuff I’ve written over the years that are quite an interesting take on life, writing, life lessons, and searching for yourself. This book is dedicated to those who are lost and searching and to those who have found and keep searching. As this search in life never ends until life ends.

It feels good to have something done. It feels good to have a new book out. It feels good to have your second book published. It feels even better when you’ve done it all yourself. It is all yours; I mean, it is all mine. It is a piece of me and a piece of my life, and I am happy to release that burden out there in the world and take that baggage off my shoulders. Let it go. Let it fly. Let it do what it does. Let it live. The future is here. The future is near. The future is all the unwritten books out there in the world. And I will make this future more interesting, as there is just so much more to say and to write and to think about. Life has just begun.

Happy Birthday, JohnLoraineBlog!

~ John Loraine ~ 12 Comments

This October is the third anniversary since I started my blog. It is quite a new milestone for me personally, and it is this new activity that kept me going and kept me writing and trying and posting regularly. I created this blog with a simple idea to write regularly and share it with other people. I used to spend a lot of time trying to submit to other websites, publications, literature contests, and all that other shit, and as time went by, I figured it was such a fucking waste of time, money, and energy. I could’ve been creating more instead of trying to get some assholes to accept and publish my poems or stories on their sites. At one point, I looked up several of those publications and their shitty websites, and I thought, fuck them all. Who is going to find and read my stuff there anyway? I might as well create my own site and post there any fucking thing I want, as often as I want, and make this site as good as possible. And one sunny day in October of 2019, I fucking did it. I created my own website, and the John Loraine Blog was born.

I was still early in my writing life and was writing sporadically here and there whenever I could. I had my moments of inspiration, and I wrote a lot, but then I had some long holes where I couldn’t bring myself to write a fucking thing. I always knew I wanted to be a writer, and I knew that a writer’s job is as little as sitting down and writing. I didn’t have any discipline. I lacked character. At times I didn’t know what to write about. I was overthinking everything. Then I waited a long time for the perfect moment to come to sit down and write, which never came. I wasn’t any fucking good, to begin with. Not saying I am any fucking good now, either. But all those years of writing weren’t wasted, and I’ve evolved as a writer. My writing has improved, and there is so much more of it now. So this blog became my new writing destination and the main reason to keep writing and posting regularly. In the “About” section of my blog, I wrote this, which pretty much defines the primary purpose of this blog and its identity: “This blog is a place for me to practice and share my writing, go crazy, pour out my inspirations into something, and primarily post shit that would never be published anywhere else by anybody. You might find typos, grammar mistakes, incoherent sentences, and random thoughts jumping from one topic to another, and that’s alright. Nobody’s perfect, and neither am I. The point is to share my personal experiences, struggles, hardships, thoughts, ideas, and whatever else comes to mind.”

Since the start, I have shared some stories that shaped me into who I am today. There is a three-stories series called “My shit’s out of luck,” where I describe some real-life events and my struggles with writing and life in general. These stories were to shape the theme of my blog, and they are very close to my heart, and they made me who I am today. The first story, or rather a rant, which I wrote and submitted online back in 2018, has been accepted by a lady from England from the New London Writers organization. She decided to post it on her literate website. That has been my main writing breakthrough moment. That fucking moment changed my life. At that time, I felt that I was being discovered and would be a public writer, so to speak. I felt super fucking hyped and excited after receiving an acceptance email from the lady in England. Then I started to freak out. I thought, fuck, this piece is such a crazy fucking thing to go public. How would people respond? How should I feel about this now being in the public eye? Should I change my name? I was out of the two corporate jobs around that time, driving for Uber for a living, and I surely didn’t want to fuck up my job searching process. So I decided to call myself John Loraine instead of my real name. The lady from the New London Writers didn’t mind me using a nickname for this publication. John is a prevalent name, and it also belongs to so many great people and writers. In my mind, I dedicated this name to John Fante. The Loraine part came from the one historic building I have been obsessed with since I first saw it, the Divine Lorraine Hotel in Philadelphia. I removed the second “r” to make it easier to spell. This is how my pen name came to be.

So this is how it all began for me. We had another conversation with New London Writers about posting regularly on their platform and becoming a member of their organization, but the conversation dropped off at some point. I am trying to remember exactly why and when. I think I blew it off. I guess I was too damned occupied, busy driving for Uber, and scared to get my work out into the free world. I needed more material to be published, and I already felt too much pressure from my future regular submissions. It was a mistake on my end. This fucking publication was off the hook. They would publish my stories with all my profanity as long as it was not “borderline illegal.” Where could you find a platform like that anymore? I felt like Bukowski for a moment. I felt like, fuck, this is it. Almost 100% of publications I was trying to submit and have been 99.9% rejected were super woke and polite and very fucking flamboyant platforms publishing flamboyant writers. In comparison, this place in England seemed to be groundbreaking. The New London Writers doesn’t exist anymore. I think they ceased to exist shortly after our partnership. Not because of me. I assume because there was no gas in the tank. They ran out of resources, and whatever they had going there probably didn’t monetize.

But I have survived. I’ve learned my lesson. In 2018, I had 0 experience with blog writing, writing, publishing, and creating anything on WordPress. A year later, I matured, and I figured out I could do this independently. I could create my website and blog and start writing and posting whatever I want there. I’ve learned from online videos how to create a blog and then looked up some other technical shit to make it what it is today. It was quite an undertaking for me at the time, but somehow it all worked out. JohnLoraineBlog was born in October 2019 and is still alive and kicking.

Since the beginning, I have been trying to post regularly, at least three to four times per month. I combined the prose with poetry to keep it more interesting for the readers and myself. My goal wasn’t to reach many people. My goal was to publish something as if many people were expecting something from me every month. That mentality kept me going through the last few years. I wrote a lot. I wrote consistently. I have the material. I wasn’t afraid anymore of sharing my writing with the world. It was OK. It felt great. I felt accomplished. And now, I’ve become a true working and published writer, an independent writer who wrote his mind and soul. I hated the idea of writing to support an agenda or try to fit into some establishment. I didn’t give two fucks about any establishment. It was me, myself, and my writing. Free as a bird in the sky.

Toward the end of 2019, I decided to publish my poems as a poetry collection book, of which I had over 200 in total. I knew that it would take forever and more to try to get some publication involved. So I’ve decided to self-publish my first book. With today’s resources, it is easy as anything. I’ve found a designer for a book cover who did a great fucking job. I reviewed, rewrote, and edited all of my poems. It took me a while to go through everything and put my manuscript in order, but I did it. In mid-2020, when the pandemic was roaming the world, I locked myself out and finished the book. In early July, “My Poems My Soul” was up on Amazon. I cannot describe how happy I was then. What an accomplishment for a struggling writer this moment has been. What an achievement for somebody who just a few years back started to write poetry, imitating Charles Bukowski and dreaming about becoming a published author one day.

At the time of this writing, I’ve already finished collecting material for my second self-published book. This upcoming book will include my blog posts for the last three years. The idea came about last year. I originally planned to publish this book in 2021 to celebrate two years of JohnLoraineBlog, but somehow I was never able to find time for it. This year I took it seriously, and I did the work. I went through everything I wrote and posted on my blog, edited and rewrote, and organized it all, so it is now ready to be published. Why did I decide to publish what was already posted on my blog? I felt bad for all the work I’d done over the years, and it would be an injustice to leave everything up there like that. It would make me a more accomplished writer if it all became a book. I needed to have it collected in a book to keep it alive. This blog might cease to exist at some point, but the book will live forever.

So what does the future hold? Fuck, if I know. One thing I know for sure is that I am not planning to stop writing. It will go on. I am increasingly convinced that I should be writing and trying different things and getting better at it. I know that this is a journey. I realize that life will come back at me kicking and screaming and fucking me over like it usually does. But I know something else. The more complicated my life is, the better my writing becomes. I have two drafts of two novels and three great ideas for three more books. All it takes is to sit the fuck down and start writing them all out. I will accomplish something someday. I want to become a famous writer. It is a crazy idea, but all the greats have started somewhere. I want to dedicate more and more time to my writing, regardless of anything else going on.

I also have a screenwriting project idea, which could become something great one day. As far as my blog goes, I’ve renewed my domain license for another three years, so that fucking thing has some more life in it, and I will be taking advantage of it. Depending on the circumstances, I’ll continue posting here at least a couple of times per month. I also joined Substack, where I haven’t done much, but that fucking platform seems to be something I wanted to create with my blog three years ago. It has it all in one place. I need to do some more work there as well. Maybe, at some point, I’ll move to Substack entirely to keep things simple and all in one place. Will see. Time will tell.

The sad thing is that I have yet to have a single subscriber from my website. I don’t know if there is one person that reads my blog regularly. Probably not. Even though I see around a hundred visits to the blog every month from around the world. Social media sharing did not prove to be any fucking useful at all. I keep posting on both Instagram and Twitter about every single fucking post, and I have no idea how many people that channel brought over. I get a few likes here and there but doesn’t mean shit. People like the picture for the most part, which is not even pictures I took. I get them all from Pexels. My point is that it is tough to break through even though there are so many fucking channels and all this technology available to make it so easy and quick. However, this does not discourage me. This only makes me work even more and work harder.

I do it all for myself first. I want to keep track and a trail of my writing and my progress somewhere where it is visible. At one point in time, I can say, damn, I wrote so fucking much, and it all can be found here on my blog. Joe Rogan once said about his podcast that it was never about getting millions of listeners; it was always consistent and honest work and real honest conversations. In the end, he has the number-one podcast in the entire fucking world. That idea was on my mind when I started writing this blog. It only has been three years. The world is changing every day, and nobody knows what the future holds. Maybe, at one point, this thing will come to fruition and become a go-to blog for many people.

In conclusion, I would like to say thank you to all who visited my blog, all who read anything on my blog, and the few people who bought my poetry book. I don’t give a fuck about popularity, although it would indicate that I have achieved something in my life as a writer. Again, this is my battleground and my practice field, and it makes me happy to post anything every so often. So I will continue writing and posting on my blog in the same spirit for the next few years. And even if this writing passion takes me nowhere, I will have a pretty damn good amount of material and evidence that I am a true writer with a solid book of work. Writing is all that matters here. Writing is all that makes me feel happy and accomplished, and I will move forward in that direction. Happy third-anniversary, JohnLoraineBlog! I raise my glass today to so many more productive and creative years and for a bright and free future for contemporary writing and blogging. Cheers!