Still Blogging After All These Years

The eclipse was awesome, by the way.

Hello, my friends, all 15 of you.

In theory, there are over 10,000 people who follow this blog. Maybe I should write “people,” since who knows how many are bots, dormant accounts, dormant humans (RIP). There was a time, though, a long decade ago, when this was a bopping little community, not just here at Drinking Tips but across WordPress. I treasured that community, and it even developed into some actual off-blog friendships. (Hi, Bill.)

I read somewhere that the average lifespan of a blog is five years. And that’s a real blog, people using the platform to express their thoughts, their dreams, their recipes. Me, I used this space mostly to repost my weekly newspaper column. Then I took a three-month sabbatical that turned into three years. I now write once a month for the local, which is probably about right.

In the interim, readers seem to have fallen away. And it’s not just you, it’s me; of all the blogs I used to follow, I now follow maybe three.

To make a long blog post short, I’ve popped by here to tell you I’m over there.

Last fall, I changed my writing habit – up in the morning, grab my coffee and write. It doesn’t matter what. Sometimes it’s nothing, sometimes it turns into something. And sometimes I’ve done something with those somethings.

One of those somethings is setting up an account over at Medium. Like a change in habit, a change of scenery can do you good. I’ve published pieces there under my own name and with Slackjaw Humor (my latest: What’s Inside Your Baby) It’s paywalled; I’m sorry/not sorry. I’ve been at this a long time and have decided that if I can get 53 cents for publishing a piece, I’d like my 53 cents, please. (Seriously, Medium membership is not expensive, and there’s some good content over there.)

I’ve also had acceptances at McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. I had a long, dispiriting run of rejections from them in 2022 and 2023, but since the fall have placed five pieces. I think that has a lot to do with my improved writing habits and personal head space (a post for another time, perhaps), so it’s all very gratifying. Here are my most recent pieces:

• In Retrospect, Hiring Macbeth as Our Tinned Soup Ambassador Was a Bad Idea
• God Leaves a Voice Message for Jesus on Holy Saturday
• Dashiell Hammett’s Saint Patrick and the Case of the Emerald Asp
• I Am the Balance on Your Gift Card, Unknowable, Eternal

I’ve also had some comedy posted at Points in Case this year:

• Our Committee Welcomes Fresh Ideas, as Long as They Don’t Conflict with Windowpane Smashing Festival
• My Resolution to Quit Eating Children Is Holding Up!

What else have I been up to? My novel Smileyville has more or less run its course. It never got the traction I hoped for but it was well received and got some kind reviews. Makes great summer reading, he said shillingly.

I also completed a script for a new comedy that I hope to produce in 2025. It’s set in a campground with two couples, and the wife discovers that the person on the adjacent site is her ex. It’s called Two Tents. 

So that’s the news. I’m still loving being a grandfather, navigating later-middle-age, thinking about the future and trying not to dwell too much on the past.

Here’s Angie McMahon on that theme to play us out. Take care, friends. I’ll pop back soon.

My Granddaughter’s Hair

While I never played a significant role in the lives of my daughters’ hair, in the end I could pull off a tidy ponytail and, in a pinch, some pretty neat pigtails. I could patiently unsnag a knot without anyone calling Child Services.

My granddaughter’s hair, on the other hand, is in a whole other league. Malea has her mother’s Celtic fineness plus her father’s Jamaican/Bajan curls. Left to its own devices, it springs up from her head like the lead in Eraserhead. It’s beautiful hair that other girls will be jealous of. She’ll be able to do things with this hair.

I, however, cannot.

Come On Get Happy: Smileyville Reviews

Smileyville

My new novel Smileyville has been out for three months. People tell me they like it. But then, what are they going to tell me, they hate it? They had qualms? Get out of my doorway, you creep? No, people are nice. Especially Canadians, as suggested in this review by Melanie Cutting at Good Reads (two words), which originally appeared in The Sherbrooke Record, the local English daily here in the Eastern Townships.

So what else are people saying, you ask?

“Along the way, there are plenty of smiles and laughs. Murray the humourist doesn’t let us down. While there may not be as much laugh-out-loud, roll-in-the-aisle humour as in A Hole in the Ground, Murray’s satire has mellowed and matured, finding the sweet spot between the difficult truth of human relationships and not taking yourself too seriously.” — Angela Leuck, The Townships Sun (Sherbrooke, Que.)

“Mr. Murray has the ability to create sympathetic characters…. Similarly, the relationships between the books’ main characters always have genuine heft. Mr. Murray is clearly a generous soul and treats his creations with respect, the possible exception of Mayor Dumb-Ass…. Both [A Hole in the Ground and Smileyville] offer stories that are engaging and entertaining.” – Joseph Gresser, The Chronicle (Barton, Vt.)

You can read other reviews of Smileyville over on Goodreads (one word). If you’ve read Smileyville and it gave you feelings, please add your own good words (as many as you like) to Goodreads or Amazon, where you can order your copy. Or contact the author — that’s me — directly.

 

 

Managing Your Monkeys at Christmas

Keep your friends close and your monkeys closer.  Image source: https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/business/2016-12/23/content_27756897_4.htm

Once again, the holiday season is upon us, which means an abundance of Christmas parties, and with them comes the constant risk of over-indulging in monkeys.

Monkeys are deeply woven into Christmas culture. Canadians are expected to spend $2.2 billion on monkeys this December. That’s a lot of monkey business.

Christmas monkeys were first referenced in the Nativity story when the three wisemen visited the Christ child in the manger and offered Him gifts of gold, frankincense and lemur.

You are invited to my sleepover

“Bro, I said I was the bottom this time.”

I know we’re adults, with jobs and responsibilities and horrible things that happen when we eat curry, but do you want to come to my house for a sleepover?

It seems like the simplest way for us to become friends. It’s not easy making friends as an adult. When we were kids, someone in your class would simply come up to you and ask, “Want to have a sleepover?” Next thing you know you were eating some other family’s weird food and lying on a strange bedroom floor next to your new best friend.

Later in the night, you might be startled awake by a deep rumbling that you at first think is a monster but eventually realize is only your friend’s father snoring. And if you heard moaning, it had to be a ghost – please, God, let it be a ghost!

By morning, you and your friend had created lasting bonds. And some atrocious smells.