For some reason, a couple of nights ago, I decided I ought to write a “Mission Statement” for my blog. I even started composing it in my head. But I didn’t write anything down (I was probably in bed falling asleep at the time). Somehow the statement tied together with talking about my mom reading my novel. So after I wrote about that yesterday, I sat down to write the statement.

And I could not remember what was so important about it or why I needed some sort of statement other than “this is my blog.” If that weren’t already clear, I don’t know that any kind of statement could help. And as for the “Mission” part, I kept thinking “Mission?” What sort of “mission”?

If there’s a mission it’s to promote my writing, fiction and non-fiction. You’ll find most everything I’ve ever published on this site. I recently imported a ton of entries from my site, Popshot, so the archives go back to 1999 now. I’m also manually adding articles, reviews and other crap to the Portfolio category of the site.

Since January, I’ve been promoting my novel, Being Good, on the web. (I’ve tried to promote it to dead tree publications as well but with little success.) When Vodkapundit and Instapundit mentioned it, my sales went up. I’d like to amplify those sales a great deal (especially since I haven’t yet made back my costs). Hopefully, readers will find something I say on this blog amusing or interesting enough to check out the novel.

BECAUSE… I’ve finished my next novel.

It’s called Barry’s Cherries and it’s hilarious, even if I do say so myself. Where Being Good was kind of dark and sarcastic, Barry’s Cherries is bubbly and light. It’s as fun and warm as the hot tub scene that opens the story.

And it’s nuts. A professional wrestler, a country musician, bikini models, a redneck, a chubby news anchorwoman, a nasty lawyer and a washed up B-movie director make up the cast. There’s nudity, a car chase, break ins, sex tapes, cops, nudity and plenty of punk rock.

So I’m going to start talking about it a lot in the coming days and weeks. I am exploring my options for releasing it. I’ve never had much luck getting in touch with agents. And I’m not gregarious enough to schmooze and make contacts. But I’m going to make an effort. And in the meantime, I’m going to start making the arrangements to self-publish again. It was a blast to self-publish Being Good and my guess is this could be even more fun.

If you haven’t checked out Being Good, you can read an excerpt here. If you have read it, I’d really appreciate a review on Amazon.