When novelists say in the last line of the acknowledgements that they couldn’t have done it, i.e., written their books, without their supportive  warm-fuzzy spouse, I wonder what I was thinking of at my marriage ceremony.

We’re like Blondie and Dagwood, except at the far end of middle age.

For better or worse, for richer or poorer…but nothing about supporting my writing.   My husband never read my work when I freelanced (“too trite and bubbly,” he would say of my latest feature on diners or diaries), and he has particularly avoided my blog.  Not only my blog, but all blogs, are a huge waste of talent, he says.

We’re a little like Blondie and Dagwood, only at the far end of middle age.  In other words, we don’t always share each other’s interests.

I used to write fiction, and perhaps I’ll go back to it someday.  He was more supportive of that, but of course he never had to read it.  The problem is, if you get to page 91 without a plot, your novel, or in my case, novels, are in trouble.

Blogging is like playing in a loud, fun rock band.  We’re practicing in the basement, sometimes we’re on key and other times we’re discordant, and we never, ever do covers, because we want to be ourselves.

But when you get “discovered,” you sometimes stop saying what you mean.  I broke up with myself at Frisbee:  A Book Journal (my old blog) because  I was gobsmacked to discover that a few of the writers I’d panned had visited my blog. Why?  Why?  Why?  I asked myself.

Then I got back together with myself here at Mirabile Dictu, where I have been somewhat more cautious about what I say.  I have tried to be more positive.

But now I’m thinking I just want to blast a couple of  contemporary writers BECAUSE I’VE  BEEN SO F—ING NICE for so long.

Some blogs really do PR.  They’re so nice I wonder what they’re really thinking.  But I’ll tell you where they don’t do PR.  Goodreads.  I was there the other day, just looking around, reading some of the discussions, and they were really panning a very good writer of women’s fiction.  They were hopping mad, because they’d gotten review copies and wasted their time.  I had to laugh, because most of the bloggers I know tend to get a little syrupy about review copies.

I’ll be writing about books again soon, never fear.

I intend to go back to dead writers.

I will write about a few new books I’ve read, but I might have to be a tiny bit pessimistic again.