Sometimes I can be dense.
Despite a long personal history of online activity—starting with BBSs during the 80s, way too many hours on GEnie during its heyday, and Web surfing from the first wave—I’ve had a reluctance to submit creative works for publication online. After all, I’ve made a career (since 1984) in print publishing. And though I have a passion for ebooks (preferring an electronic copy of pretty much anything over having to lug around a paper copy), that’s not really online publishing, as in posting work where anyone can access it freely.
So I’ve had this Neanderthalic bias against online publication. Recently, however, I’ve had a refreshing bit of water splashed in my face. Which is to say I’ve had a couple of poems published online, and I can finally see the benefits—such as sharing them with anyone who’s willing to follow a hyperlink. Here you go:
“Who-Sunnit?” (a “cozy mystery” sonnet) (updated link)
“Night Musings” (in Protodimension issue #3) (updated link)
Please give them a read, then come back here and let me know what you think.
Thanks!
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I did not play BBS site games, I was too busy d/l-ing, well, you know what teen males love d/l-ing! And the Novation D-cat modem (I thing that was the maker) was 110 baud, you coukld see each charater appear on the screen separately. but I didn’t want to seem too old right off the bat. 300 baud, Hmph! Woulda been like a racehouse to me.
1200 baud! That was blazingly fast—compared to my 300-baud modem. I remember hour-long long-distance calls late at night just to download Bouncing Babies. Did you play any of the WWIV BBS games, perchance? There was a good Camelot game, as I recall.
I almost always prefer a printed-on-paper version of whatever to read. I liked your first poem better, and this may not be “fair”, but at least in part because it was black text on tan background. (Almost as good, to me, as black on white, closest look you can get to printed page.) For me, both stories and poetry is about the message, and it’s way too distracting to me, as in the case of your second poem, of the editor or layoput person or whoever, to get overyly fancy with pictures and backgrounds and shadings and watermarks and neat-o effects, to the point that the writing is fighting for notice, let alone recognition, let alone engagement. I’m an old fuddy-duddy, I know, but hose are my honest views. Ah, BBSes, I remember those fondly… with my blazingly fast 1200 baud dial-up modem… good times! Thanks for sharing your poems, sir.