Where You Been

And by “you,” I mean me. I’m making YOU ask ME that! Even though you maybe weren’t even wondering! Oh, writing.

Anyway, while I haven’t been posting regularly here much lately, I’m not dead, nor have I given up. In fact, I’ve been plenty busy, and I’m about to get even busier. But I feel I owe an explanation. Here’s what’s been going on, category by category:

Teaching

• I’m teaching two undergrad writing courses at Western CT State University, where I’ve been an adjunct in the writing department (undergrad and the MFA program) for two years.
• I’m now also teaching two sections of Media History at Mercy College in New York.
• Finally, I’m running my private workshops in fiction here in Westport, CT. Live nearby? I have spots open for an upcoming Tuesday evening class!

Writing

• I’ve been reviewing various TV shows for the wonderful Previously.TV site. Most recently: the final seasons of True Blood and Boardwalk Empire and the first seasons of Outlander and The Leftovers. You can find all my Previously.TV writing collected here.
• I’m also finishing up my second story collection, Fan Fiction, which is thematically linked around the imagined lives of the famous and infamous.

Editing

• Over the summer, I edited not one but two YA novels, as well as chapters from a horror novel-in-progress. Have a project you’d like me to look at? Hit me up here. (Note: easy form at the bottom.)

Podcasting

• What Are You Reading? is still on its end-of-summer hiatus right now, but we had a fantastic run of guests right through most of August, including YA superstar Danielle Paige, current author/former Onion editor Joe Randazzo, and fascinating sociologist Dr. Rachael Woldoff. You can catch up with those here, before I start the show up again for the Fall.

Churching

• We own a church up in Prince Edward Island, aka “The Gentle Island” of Canada. (Versus those French brutes on Saint Pierre and Miquelon, I guess.) This summer we made it up there twice (it’s a 12-hour ride each way).
• Oh, also, we bought bikes for all four of us via online classifieds, and there was something wrong with every one of them. But hey, we biked!

Othering

• Remember I said I was going to get busier? I’m launching a new specialty food blog and related food business, as soon as I receive my bakery license from the state of Connecticut. That’s all I can say for now, so I’ll just let the words “bakery license” wash over you.

There you go! All caught up. Oh — and I finally got a new record player to go with the scores of records I’ve amassed over the years. I post these on Instagram under the hashtag #LPaday, so find me there under “debengram” — “instaham” was taken — if you’d like to see what I’ve been listening to. (Spoiler: mostly ’70s stoners.) Meanwhile, I’ll post something writing-related here soon. I was kind of marveling at the super-odd structure of Sixteen Candles recently….