Oops. Sorry.

So, I got swamped with obligations recently, which doomed my attempt to turn this blog into a diary of my attempt to make a documentary about Steve Novick's run for Senate. It also sort of turned out that making a documentary film in one's spare time is so difficult and time-consuming that keeping a diary of the effort is pretty much impossible.

However, in the time I was gone I noticed that Stephany put me on her blogroll. Thanks, Steph!

I guess I will now, out of the blue, turn this post into a run-down of the success of my writing friends. Because I've been marveling lately at how many of the friends I've made through writing have gone on to become so successful. Laila Lalami wrote a great collection of short stories and now writes for the Nation and other magazines. Maud Newton's blog took off and made her famous among the literati. I've heard Pia Ehrhardt on Selected Shorts and Tin House published her collection "Famous Fathers." Aaron Burch, who I met when I found a bookmark he had placed in a copy of "John Henry Days" in a Seattle Barnes and Noble, started Hobart, which has become, for my money anyway, the most exciting lit mag in America. Pasha Malla landed a deal for a novel and a collection of stories.

There are many others, of course, who deserve mention on this small backwater of the internet known as my blog, but I will say here that the most talented and charming writer of all the friends I've made through writing is Stephany Aulenback. She's simply brilliant. So I was happy to see that after what seemed like a hiatus she took when her son Luke was born, she is back and writing with such energy. Every word she chooses is a pleasure to read. Go Steph!