That's the problem with new toys, you're never certain how they work until you push one of the buttons.

I intended to have this entry as my first, but I pushed the silly button and "Forlorn" jumped out of the gate and was halfway down the track before I noticed my mistake.

This is my fourth attempt at establishing a literary blog. Previous attempts were on blogspot and my original blog that still resides on LiveJournal. If you're interested in a more personal view of my life check out v. 1.1 (go to http://larsneuffeldt.livejournal.com/). Don't go there unless you're very bored and don't mind getting even more bored. I'm pathetic to the core.

Other writings can be found by visiting my pathetic excuse for a web site (http://www.larsneuffeldt.com/). There are a number of stories some might find interesting, plus quite a few very strange pieces that I'm still trying to get a handle on, including "Excerpts from History of the Argottean Federation" which is a bit of silliness I visit every now and then when I'm very, very bored.

If you're really bored, no, really, really bored, as in it's either clean out the closet or do something really boring, wander over to The Cove and read my current project, "The Pastel Cowboy." Zach Alexander is sixteen when he is outed by supposed friends and then ostrasized by family and community. He seeks his freedom in a new city and in the course of a year learns a lot about himself.

Okay, enough of the plugs.

Who am I?

I'm a 57 year old married gay man who existed in a very dark closet for too long. A year after coming out of said closet I went a little loopy (no, it was a lot) and took an early retirement from a very good job. I had a plan, it didn't work out because a crazy person thought it up, and now I'm a truck driver. Truck driving is one of the few jobs today where no experience is necessary and you can make gobs of money basically sitting on your butt all day long.

How long have I been writing?

In 1986, I took English Comp at the University of Puget Sound where I was employed as a typesetter (pre-desktop publishing) and the professor said not only did I have a talent for writing, but I was probably cursed, too. (You know you're cursed when you wake up in the middle of the night and have to write.) She gave me a long list of authors to read; as in read all of their works before ever contemplating writing anything of substance. It took me nearly four years to get through the list because I wasn't reading for pleasure, I was paying attention to how the stories were constructed. Even today, I read most stories looking at how the writer does the magic. If you haven't noticed, there are some very magical writers right here at gayauthors.org.

What's next?

My current plan is to alternate blog entries between v. 1.1 and v. 2.0, but sometimes that might not be a strict plan, like today.

I'm currently working on a short story about a thirty-something professor at the University of Wyoming who decides to take his Land Rover and go exploring in the wilds of Wyoming. He gets lost. Then he comes to a house and . . . .

I'm currently working on the ninth chapter of The Pastel Cowboy. It's not going well. The lead, Zach Alexander, is going to get bashed at the end of the chapter. Like I said, it's not going well. In fact, doing this entry proves it's not going well. I even posted a short story on eFiction instead of working on Zach's story. I can get maybe a paragraph before all thought processes shut down. I can do other stuff, just not that.

My next big project is a story about a boy who was a secondary character in my second novel. He figures out he's gay when he's twelve, has his first sexual experience at fifteen, nearly commits suicide at nineteen when his father seemingly rejects his homosexuality, and then things really go downhill. The nice thing about this story is that there won't be any violence. It's going to be bunnies and ducklings playing in a meadow full of sweet smelling flowers on a warm spring afternoon. I have a problem doing bunnies. My bunnies tend to be maneaters a la Monty Python.

Well, they're you go. That's me in a nutshell. The good thing about doing this blog is that I can leave all the really horrible, boring stuff about my struggles with depression on my other blog and concentrate on creativity here.