Every month, or so, I do another one of these blog posts about the inner-workings of being a writer, but all my regular readers know the unvarnished truth: It’s merely a clever way to induce you to click on one of the adverts on this page. I’ll wait…

Done? Good, because there’s so much to talk about this month.

CIRCLE THE DATE: First and foremost, there are only about 70 more shopping days before National Beard Month is once again upon us. As The Flying Monkey Squad turns its lonely eyes upon National Beard Month, the question on everyone’s lips is, of course:

FACEBOOKERY: One of the (many) reasons I joined in on the facebookery in the first place (when I was still writing under the performance artist nom de plume of Aunty Em Ericann) was to see whether writing as a different character would free up my writing style. After a decade in the Citytv newsroom, I felt my writing had gotten staid and pedestrian. Assuming the identity of a character was incredibly liberating. Now that I am back to writing as Headly Westerfield again, I feel a
freedom with words I never had before, which is now reflected in every word I write. Even this one.

COMING SOON: Which is why I can announce that Not Now Silly will be serializing excerpts of my book in the next couple of weeks. Some of my most faithful readers have been curious about all the documents I have been collecting. That’s so I can more accurately describe the protagonists/antagonists of the book and, more importantly, the times in which they lived. There’s been recent, rapid progress and I’m excited to be able to unleash it on the world. You’ll be surprised at where the research took me because I was surprised. So, please stay tuned for that. I’ll be posting it just as soon as I am able to format the parts of the book that are ready for publication. The graphics have been ordered and I’m awaiting delivery of that, too.

AN AUGUST MONTH: The month of August has been exciting at Not Now Silly for another reason as well. I got two of my highest hit counts ever on days this month — one almost twice my previous all-time high. That makes this month on track to set a new record as well. It didn’t hurt that Reddit picked up one of my Trolleygate stories, as did Curbed Miami. However, to my eternal delight, Curbed also linked to one of my stories about the historic, 120-year old E.W.F. Stirrup House, currently undergoing Demolition by Neglect. Saving this house and restoring Mr. Stirrup’s legacy has become an obsession. People are starting to take notice of the E.W.F. Stirrup House and that can only be a good thing. I have made an exciting new connection recently, which I also hope to report upon soon.

Meanwhile my Top Ten Posts for the same period looks like this:

FIRST PAST THE POST: These are all essays I’m extremely proud of. I’m pleased they are getting this kind of devoted readership on Not Now Silly and being shared on the innertubes. If you like what you’ve read, feel free to use the SHARE buttons at the bottom of every post. I always appreciate the added readership.

CH-CH-CHANGES: I will be making a slight change to Not Now Silly over the next couple of days, one that (hopefully) you might not even notice. One complaint I’ve received (more than once) is that the colour scheme makes the links hard to find. I’ll be tinkering with colours to make links more obvious. However, that’s the only negative feedback I received from the format change in April, which pleases me. I like the current minimalist look, so I’m not going to tinker with it too much.

JUST DO IT: If you’ve gotten this far without clicking on an advert, shame on you. That’s the only money I get for all these words that you obviously enjoyed so much that you’ve made it this far down the page. Clicking on an advert costs you nothing, but it puts a few cents in my pocket . . . and I do mean few.

So, click on an advert. Do it for the children. Do it before you’re too busy celebrating National Beard Month.