Somewhere around 1998 or so I finished Chapter 23 of ’she hates my futon’. If you visit my old site via the Internet Archive “The Wayback Machine” you’ll see that at the bottom of the last chapter I wrote “THIS IS NOT THE END… ALMOST, BUT NOT THE VERY END. This Chapter was posted on 5-17-2000. I disappeared for a few years but I’m back and fully intending to get a new chapter written. -Craig”

I utterly failed to fulfill my promise.

What happened between now and then? *Sigh*. For sure, plenty of depression. A lack of priorities. Life out of control and hopelessly stuck on Fast Forward. Perhaps all of those and more. Back then my website was called myboot.com But somewhere around 2004 I even let go of that. I was moving into a loft and I needed a bunch of new furniture. Some anonymous guy offered me a large amount of $bones$ for my domain name and I found it very hard to refuse his offer.

But look. I’m back. I’ve been happy for some time now. I have a very intelligent, two-year old Standard Poodle named Darby (named after the late singer of the punk band The Germs, Darby Crash.) He’s is a daily source of hilarity and belly laughs and he has show dog lineage too. Neat right? The registered AKC name I chose is Barbican Black Irishman (Breeder lineage + chosen name) mainly because I consider myself clever, he’s jet black, and he was born on St. Pats Day.

I’ll never show him. Can you see me prancing around the ring like those dog shows on Thanksgiving day or the movie “Best in Show”? I can’t.

I have a ton of time on my hands now after being miraculously freed from an addiction to an online video game (World of Warcraft). Couple that with: I don’t have a girlfriend at the moment which means my time is MY time. And as an added benefit, that also means I have much more money on my hands too. But no makin’ out. No sex. No waking up next to her. And no playing with her boobs while she’s still asleep in the morning. I kid of course on that last bit. I’m not sure which of those are better, pro’s and con’s-wise. Since I have no prospects at the moment I’m going to insist to you that “loads of spare cash” is the more important of the two.)

The only downside to my restarting the website and ‘Futon’ is that I don’t read books anymore. Instead, I listen to them via audible.com from my iPhone whenever I’m in the car. If you aspire to be a writer (like I do. cough) I will let you in on a little secret. Reading books on a regular basis is to writing like working out at the gym, frequenting the batting cage, and injecting steroids are to professional baseball players. It increases your vocabulary. It gives you a feeling for the flow, the rhythm of good writing, and just like a guitarist that is influenced by Jimi Hendrix, it influences your writing style. You pick up things, tricks of the trade, and add them to your writing style. If you’re paying attention, books even teach you what is currently acceptable in punctuation and grammar and also how to write concisely. I could go on and on.

Alright, I’ll halt my sermon. Where I’m going with this is that my failure to read books for ten years coupled with my failure to write for ten years? My writing style: my ability to write well structured sentences? I’m more than a little rusty. Perhaps my writing always sucked. Now it will just suck more. Oh well, no matter what anyone says I feel that I have some good ideas – some decent humor.

So please forgive me for a few things. I apologize for the past, and for the future. I will be finishing Futon. I have always had the plot in my head. I know the characters like they’re old annoying but lovable friends. And most importantly, I know how how the story ends.

Coming soon. Chapter 24. “The Stew-Man Cometh”.

Yours,

Craig Mitchell