What I got done offline this evening

1. Cleaned the hermit crab tank
2. Played badminton with my daughter
3. Built a LEGO table
4. Created a weekly activity checklist for my daughter
5. Made giardiniera from some leftover celery
6. Built with my daughter using our nifty new LEGO table
7. Watched some postseason baseball
8. Played Bad Piggies

Okay, maybe I should spend less time on the laptop at night...

My Harvard Commencement

I've been listening to a lot of college acapella music lately.  Maybe it's because my job search has put me in something of a nostalgic mood, especially now that I know I'll be leaving Harvard in just a few short weeks. That's right, folks- I'm happy to announce that I've accepted the position of Associate Director for Resource Sharing and Reserves at the Sterling Memorial Library at Yale University, starting this August! This means that my days here at the World's Greatest University are numbered.

Although I am thrilled about the new job and excited about the challenges ahead of me, now when I walk across Harvard Yard on my way to Widener Library in the morning I can't help but feel bittersweet about my impending departure.  It always occurred to me that every time I swiped my ID card to enter the library there would come a time when I would no longer have the privilege of doing so, but I guess I didn't realize that that day would come sooner and not later.

Which brings me back to my recent acapella obsession.  Right now my favorite track by far is a cover of Josh Groban's "Awake" by Northwestern University's Freshman Fifteen.  Though the song is obviously about someone preparing to say goodbye to their loved one, the sentiment that the lyrics encapsulate is pretty much what I'm feeling at the moment:

And I know that only time will tell us how
To carry on without each other
So keep me awake to memorize you
Give me more time to feel this way
We can't stay like this forever
But I can have you next to me today

True story:  it took me 13 years to get my Bachelor's degree.  However much I'd like to credit this unusually long and circuitous path towards undergraduate completion to my Bluto Blutarskyesque lifestyle, it was less a function of partying hard and more a Socratic exercise in figuring out how little it was that I actually knew about myself (okay, there was some partying, a change of major or two, and a lot of acapella, but that's a completely different story!).

The white-hot intellectual fires of MIT very quickly melted away any pretense that my 18-year old self may have harbored about being an unappreciated genius;  once I had cooled down and recovered enough to make what I assumed was an informed decision concerning what course my studies should take, how could I have known that when I transferred to Boston University to study Classics I was embarking on yet another painful process of elimination, mixed in with some difficult life lessons to boot?

When I finally did leave BU with my BA, however, I felt that I had finally learned enough about myself to know what I wasn't.  So what if it took three and a quarter times longer than it should have for me to learn this lesson?  To me it was thirteen years well spent.  My parents and teachers always told me that I was stubborn- in retrospect I probably should have taken this observation to heart a lot earlier in life, but you see, I was too busy being stubborn to do so.

Therefore I find it fascinating, more than a little bit ironic, and of course totally thematically appropriate that after thirteen years of working for Harvard, I find myself leaving for a new job.  When I committed myself to Making It Happen as my New Year's resolution for 2012, I should have suspected that it would lead to my departing Harvard at long last, but for as long as I could I allowed myself the luxury of pretending that I could somehow embrace radical change without changing everything.

But change has come, and it has been radical indeed.  And just as surely as I've sloughed off upwards of sixty pounds since the beginning of the year, I seem to have wriggled free of Harvard's grasp as well.  This is the haven I chanced upon when I decided that graduate school was not for me and I found that I was at a loss as to what to do next.  This is the place where I discovered my passion for librarianship and had the good fortune to be mentored by wonderful librarians who saw my latent potential and nurtured my passion.  This is the community that helped celebrate my wedding, the birth and christening of my daughter, and many of life's other milestones along the way- big and small.

If my time as an undergraduate was about learning who I wasn't, surely my time at Harvard was about discovering who I actually was.  Even if the going here at the library has admittedly been rough of late, how could I ever dream of leaving this place?  And yet now I find myself doing just that- not out of necessity, but by choice;  not on a decision made angrily, but thoughtfully;  looking back not with bitterness or regret, but with love and gratitude for the University that took me in, the community of artists, academics, and other adventurous and/or lost souls who sustained me and inspired me, and the colleagues who helped me become the library professional I was always meant to be.

That when I finally arrived at my Socratic destination I would find that my future lay elsewhere probably should not have come as much of a surprise to me as it did (after all, in true 8-bit fashion, isn't the Princess always in another castle?).  I like to think of it as a testament to how formative an experience my time at Harvard has been that even when a great opportunity like the Yale job presented itself, I had to do some serious soul-searching before deciding even to apply for it, let alone accept it.  I'm glad that I did, of course, but I am also sad to leave behind my friends and colleagues, our patrons, and the Harvard Library itself- and Widener Library in particular.

So don't mind me if I seem to linger a little and breathe deep when I walk through the Stacks, if I slow down to listen to the never-ending beeping of the barcode scanners at the Circulation Desk, if I stop to look up and admire the brilliant view through the skylights of the Phillips Reading Room- or if you catch me flipping through the card catalogs on the third floor, marveling over the wondrous machinery down in Preservation, or standing in the Widener Memorial Room engaged in a quiet conversation with Harry.  I'm trying to soak in as much of this place as I can before I finally say goodbye.

Thank you, Harvard, for the past thirteen years.  I will always treasure our time together, but it's time for me to move on...

New in the Kindle store!

This is a short story that I wrote several years ago- it was published in the literary 'zine InkCollective (issue #4, 2007), and I'm now making it available as a Kindle edition. I think every writer who remembers the tragic events of 9/11 has tried to wrestle with the meaning of that dark day in some way. This was my attempt.

Imagine a world where it is September 10th, 2001 every day. David Nollett pretends to be a day trader in a futuristic theme park recreating pre-9/11 Manhattan, sleepwalking through his life until he meets Amber- a fellow employee of the Company portraying a hooker on 42nd Street. Or is she?

"Tomorrow Is Another Day" is a 7,000-word short story about history, memory, and the importance of letting go. 

A writer's guide to Twitter

This question came up on a thread in r/writing on Reddit from a writer trying to attract followers on Twitter.  Although my answer is geared therefore towards authors who tweet, I think it's good advice in general for anyone seeking to establish a genuine online presence on Twitter that's worth following:

1. Don't just follow your friends/followers! Use a Twitter client that allows you to monitor multiple hashtags- follow tags like #writing, #amwriting, #abna (Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards), #litchat, #pubwrite, #authors, etc. Hashtags are conversations. Don't be afraid to jump in, reply, and retweet, but don't go crazy and blow up peoples' tweetstreams with multiple serial RTs and replies all at once.
2. Tweet about a variety of topics. This might sound a little counterintuitive, but writers who tweet about nothing but writing are boring, and run the risk of coming off as shills. Tweet about other things that interest you- for example, I like to tweet about libraries (I'm a librarian), D&D and gaming in general, the Boston Red Sox, and how the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority ruins my commute pretty much every other day. Not only will you pick up more followers this way, but it also helps your real personality shine through online and makes your tweetstream seem like less of a marketing gimmick.
3. Do not automate your tweets- this may work for larger organizations but it's never a good idea for an individual. Also be careful about overly clogging your tweetstream with third-party app tweets. No one will begrudge you the occasional Foursquare check-in binge, but if most of your tweets are coming from apps people are simply going to tune you out.
4. Direct Messaging strangers is creepy. Just don't do it!
5. Share links to interesting and informative content. Reddit may have seen it all already, but never underestimate the RT power of a quality cat meme. I follow a ton of RSS feeds in Google Reader, which makes it easy to share content out to social networks. If I found something worth reading, chances are someone else out there on Twitter will as well.  The internet is such a wild and woolly place that people who help make sense of it for others are valued in social networks.  If you establish yourself as a thoughtful digital curator, people will follow you.
6. Be authentic in your tweets. As much as it seems to be driven by celebrities and Trending Topics, Twitter does actually reward original expression and the clever turn of phrase. Think of a RT as an upvote here on Reddit and you'll get the idea. Have opinions. Make jokes. Show some genuine emotion. Provide running commentary to that morning's episode of The Price Is Right (helpful hint: people on Twitter LOOOOOOOVE Plinko).

So that's pretty much how I've built up a modest Twitter following. It won't happen overnight, but you'll be surprised how tweeting on a consistent basis on a wide range of topics will translate into a steady trickle of new followers. The key is engagement. If you don't put anything into Twitter, do not expect anything substantive out of it in return.

Enjoy!  And happy tweeting...

Suitable for framing

After a fairly rotten day, I received this notification in my email inbox:

I guess this makes it official now!

The Dogfood Chronicles: "Draykon" by Charlotte E. English

Well, it's been almost four entire months and I have kept fast to my New Year's resolution to read only self-published fiction in 2012. As promised, I offer the next review in what I'm calling the Dogfood Chronicles: Draykon, a fantasy novel by Charlotte E. English.

Just as I explained how I came to be reading the first installment to this adventure in self-pub reading, I feel that it is useful to describe how I discovered each title in turn. This isn't just in the interest of declaring any predispositions or biases on my part regarding the author in question, but it also highlights the various different way in which people connect with self-published books. What I'm learning is that there is a strong social component at work here, arguably even more so than with traditionally published materials.  In the case of Draykon, I had the good fortune of receiving a positive review of my own book Confessions of a Gourmand by Ms. English a couple of years ago. This lead to a friendly correspondence whereby I learned that she too had written and self-published several of her own fantasy novels.

Draykon is a work of high fantasy, set in a fictional realm which loosely suggests England and Continental Europe but is very much its own world, overlaid with an interesting cosmology consisting of Upper and Lower Realms (more about those later). When our heroine - a young jeweler named Llandry Sanfaer - stumbles upon a cache of a unique gemstone she names istore, Llandry finds her wares are suddenly in great demand throughout not just her always-sunny native Glinnery and its darkling counterpart Glour but elsewhere in the so-called Seven Realms and beyond. Being the center of attention is bad enough for Llandry, who is painfully shy by nature, but when people connected to her jewelry begin to turn up dead she must overcome her fears and embark on an adventure to discover the truth about her precious istore and uncover an ancient secret with world-shattering implications.

Interwoven with this plot is the tale of Lady Evastany Glostrum, one of Glour's most powerful and respected sorceresses, tasked with keeping her world safe from threats from the Upper and Lower Realms. On the verge of her own high society wedding, Lady Glostrum is also drawn into the novel's central mystery when a dear friend is murdered by a sinister otherworldly creature. Who is behind the recent intrusions between the Realms, and why will they stop at nothing to obtain every last piece of Miss Sanfaer's istore? To answer these questions, Lady Glostrum must leave her life of position and privilege and put her abilities to the test against unseen foes whose mastery of forbidden magics call into question everything she has been taught about the relationship between the Seven Realms, the Uppers, and the Lowers.

I found Draykon to be a well-crafted novel with two believable female protagonists at its heart. The author poses an interesting challenge for herself in portraying Llandry not just an introvert, but someone who struggles with full-blown agoraphobia and a pair of overprotective parents to boot; in a similar vein, Lady Glostrum, although a strong and capable woman, is shown nevertheless as chafing against both the humdrum of an administrator's career and society's expectations for a female of her station. To compensate for these constraints, Ms. English arranges Llandry and Lady Glostrum in counterpoint to one another- an ambitious choice, but one that effectively splits the narrative until the very end, a la Stieg Larsson's The Girl Who Played With Fire. Some may find this off-putting, but I thought it worked rather well.

If I have any real quibble with this book, however, it is that it is almost too polished for its own good.  Writers are enjoined not to tell, but to show. While this is usually sound advice, I feel that in this case Ms. English has followed it at the expense of her own setting. Draykon is one of the more imaginative fantasy milieus I have encountered in my reading, but many of its exotic elements - such as the aforementioned Upper and Lower Realms, which end up figuring heavily into the plot - feel insufficiently explained. Being a writer of fantasy myself, I understand that it is always a delicate balancing act between fleshing out your universe and advancing the story, but I wish that the author had trusted herself with a little more world-building indulgence here and there.

That being said, Draykon is an excellent read- filled with intrigue, suspense, and action.  It is also the first in a series of novels, so I look forward to many happy returns to this uniquely-imagined world!

Conversations with my mother

My Mom: "You know, you could have been a doctor."

Me: "But Ma, I didn't want to be a doctor."

"Well, you should have been a scientist then at least."

"I *am* a scientist- a library scientist!"

Behold! My Trilogy of Terror

To celebrate Friday the 13th, the Red Sox home opener, and a successful first 100 days of Making It Happen in 2012 (also to take my mind off the fact that I'll be spending the whole day in job interviews), I'm offering my three horror novellas for free in the Amazon Kindle Store:

Bambino

The Boston Red Sox may have finally reversed the Curse of the Bambino in 2004, but only a few know the true story of what actually happened that fateful season. When a grand piano is found at the bottom of a lake in Quincy, James Flynn -- hot dog vendor at Fenway Park and seventh son of a seventh son -- finds himself drawn into a world of demons, exorcists, and MIT's mysterious Department of Alchemy, where a group of secret paranormal researchers are preparing for a final showdown with one of baseball's most legendary players. "Bambino" is a 14,000 word novella about demons, exorcism, and America's Greatest Pastime.

Keeper

Farrell's Island is only a myth, they say- something that the old salts of Cape Ann whisper about in hushed tones after one too many drinks at the bar. But when two unlucky fishermen set out in search of this fabled isle, will their obsession land them a much more dangerous catch than they'd bargained for? "Keeper" is a 11,000 word New England fishing yarn in the style of H.P. Lovecraft about the one that should have gotten away.

High Tide

As the star reporter for Get Out Magazine, Gerald McKenna has traveled the world in search of adventure. When he is sent on assignment back to the Jersey Shore, however, he learns that going home can not only be a thrill... it can be downright deadly! "High Tide" is a 14,000 word horror novella about surfing with the sharks down at the Jersey Shore.

Download these three stories for free starting Friday (4/13) through this Sunday (4/15)!

Make It Happen 2012: The First 100 Days

What a difference a few months can make!

When I jumped into the icy waters of the Atlantic Ocean on New Year's Day after deciding that it was time to change everything about my life that was frustrating me, I don't think I gave myself enough credit that I would have the courage of my convictions to see the process through. Well, here I am after 100 days of Making It Happen in 2012 and to say that I am pleasantly surprised to have confounded my own expectations in this regard would be the mother of all understatements.

Painting myself into a corner by taking my resolutions public was, in retrospect, a very good idea- one that began when I committed myself to the Rocky Neck Plunge with my fellow Gloucestermen (and women!) on Good Morning Gloucester. I may excel at letting myself down when left to my own devices, but the prospect of having to explain myself to my Facebook friends and Twitter followers proved to be an excellent form of motivation when all else failed.

The decision to Live Out Loud also tickled my obsessive-compulsive urge to document my progress, something which I know also helped keep me on track with my weight loss. If Weight Watchers Online provided the app for accurately gauging what went into my body, social media provided the wherewithal for measuring the output of my self-improvement efforts: pounds shed, words published, fears confronted, and future reimagined.

I thank the people who read this blog, who reply to my Tweets, and like my status reports on Facebook (and those of you who +1 me on Google+ as well). Whether you realized it or not, you have managed to help keep me on target over these past three months and ten days, and I am eternally grateful for your moral support- past, present, and future.

So... here are the numbers to date:

1. Pounds Lost: 43
2. Stories Self-Published on Amazon: 4 short stories, 1 novel
3. Jobs applied for: 3
4. Attitude improvement: 100%

Here's to another awesome 100 days! Rest assured that I will keep all of you updated as I continue along my path to a brand new me...

PAX: Bring Your Daughter to Play Day

For those of you who were wondering why half the people riding the MBTA this past weekend were dressed up as costumed characters, Boston just hosted the Penny Arcade Expo, aka PAX East, one of the largest gaming conventions in the country (Anime Boston was also in town, which accounts for the other half!). Ever since this popular Seattle-based con established a beachhead here on the East Coast a few years ago PAX East has grown by leaps and bounds every year, such that its attendance actually now rivals its parent event, drawing gamers from all over New England and beyond for three days of video game demos, tabletop action, and general over-the-top geeky mayhem.

Last year I had planned on bringing my daughter to PAX for the Saturday of that expo, but when a kid from her class invited her to a roller-skating birthday party on the same day I naturally lost on the face-off- video games may be fun, but no eight-year old kid turns down an afternoon at the roller rink! This year there were no scheduling conflicts, however, so I was finally able to introduce my little girl to a glimpse of gaming Nirvana... and it was good!

Although I was really nervous as to whether my daughter would enjoy herself or run away screaming, she in fact had a blast, and is already looking forward to next year's PAX East. Just in case any other gamer parents out there are wondering how to bring their children to an event as big and overwhelming as PAX and actually have a positive experience, here are a few things that in retrospect I think I managed to do right:

1. Scout out the con beforehand. If you're planning on bringing the kids, don't take them on the first day that you go. Give yourself a day to get a lay of the land and gather as much intel as you can so you're not wandering around blindly with children in tow. Figure out where the concessions are, which bathrooms are closest/most convenient, and map the easiest ways to get from Point A to Point B so you don't wear out little gamer feet in the process of shlepping back and forth across a cavernous, crowded convention center. This is also your opportunity to do the things that you want to (e.g., play some ultraviolent video games, indulge in a marathon session of Settlers of Catan, get that obligatory picture with Lollipop Chainsaw), because when you come back with your kids you should

2. Do what your children want to do. This should be a no-brainer, but if you want your kids to have a positive con experience let them set the pace and call the shots. Especially if they've never been to something like PAX, expect them to spend a goodly deal of time walking around slack-jawed and in awe of the expo floor. Let them bounce around like pinballs, gathering swag and taking pictures of cosplayers. If they want to play Mario Kart 7 for hours on end, be a good sport and let them do just that. Remember that little gamers will not be nearly as interested as you are in standing in line for yet another exclusive preview demo, nor will they be happy about steep learning curves mastering unfamiliar platforms- look for short lines and familiar (or at least intuitive) games if you want to maximize your fun. That being said, be sure to

3. Keep a list of "kid-friendly" activities on hand. Although PAX doesn't really have kids events per se, there are a lot of things going on that will be just as entertaining to your children as it will be for you. For example, a friend of mine working the con told me about a free mini-painting event that was perfect for my craft-minded daughter. We also spent an inordinate amount of time at the LEGO vendor, who allowed you to assemble your own minifigs at the price of one dollar per part- as my daughter is absolutely obsessed with LEGO, this to me was well worth the price! I also knew that she would enjoy watching the PopCap zombies dance, so I made sure we caught one of their routines in the lobby. This may sound a bit counter-intuitive, but the more you plan in advance, the more serendipitous your kids' convention will seem, and the more rewarding everyone's time will be as a result.

4. Finally, HAVE FUN! This is about showing your kids all that is good about gaming. Play your cards right and you will have a delightfully absurd, geek-positive, and memorable family experience and lay the groundwork for many happy returns.

The Harvard Library Transition Diet

As of this morning, I weighed in at 232 pounds- which means I've now lost more than forty pounds since January 1st.

What's my secret, you ask? The answer is simple: stress.

I tend to be a nervous eater. When I was a high school senior I remember polishing off an entire large tub of Goldfish crackers while waiting to hear back from MIT's Early Admissions. Food has always been my preferred method of self-medication; when I finally learned how to cook, however, it was like giving a junkie his own prescription pad.

Cooking and eating weren't just integral parts of courting my wife, but a way for the two of us to negotiate the existential angst of forsaking our plans to pursue careers in the academy and trying to find our footing in the so-called Real World. Life never seemed so bad when you sat down to a delicious home-cooked meal, or escaped for a weekend road trip with Jane and Michael Stern's Road Food as your guide.

Drawing my comfort from comfort food has always come naturally to me, so as my situation at work became more and more uncertain my diet became progressively worse. Having a sedentary job had already taken its toll on my already-oversized waistline, but three years of "library transition" was adding insult to injury as I relied on food as an escape. Feeling powerless in the office translated into extra indulgence, which of course only served to feed a vicious cycle of negative body image, constant heartburn, and sleep apnea at night.

My inability to get a decent night of shuteye was in turn affecting my attitude at work and made me an irritable zombie in the evenings and on the weekends. Whereas sleep had always come easy for me, I began to regard bedtime with a sense of dread - even worse, I feared falling asleep at the wheel during my early morning Thursday commutes or not being able to stay awake in traffic for the return trip.

Clearly, something had to give. And something did. Oddly enough, I have the Harvard Library Transition to thank for this radical shift to my lifestyle.

For the first time in years I was faced with the simple fact that the status quo would no longer be available to me as an option, and that there was nothing I could say or do to change this. Because of the structural changes taking place at the library, my job is going away. Even if it's true that there's a functionally similar job (albeit University-wide in scope) taking its place, it will be a new position with new responsibilities, a new boss, and a new mandate as our Library Transition proceeds into its implementation phase. Moreover, this is a job for which I would need to apply and interview. Taking no action was no longer an option - like it or not, I was being kicked out of my comfort zone once and for all.

Rather than surrender to my fear of the unknown, I have decided to leverage this necessity for change into an opportunity for transformation across the board. And so my vow to Make It Happen in 2012 was born. If one thing had to change, why not CHANGE ALL THE THINGS? Not just my job but my diet, my writing, my general attitude towards Life, the Universe, and Everything.

This is not meant to be a comment on the Harvard Library Transition or anyone else's personal experience of this tumultuous time as a librarian or library assistant here at the World's Greatest University - my feelings about the former are well known at this point; as for my colleagues, I feel only sympathy and solidarity. For whatever reason, repurposing the ludicrous amount of stress currently in my life as a catalyst for change has worked for me. While I wish everyone could make the same lemonade out of these bitter lemons we've been handed, I understand that everyone's circumstances are different.

We're now in the endgame of this transition, and things are getting weirder and even more stressful than before as my colleagues and I compete with one another for positions in the new organizational structure (like the Hunger Games, only a lot less entertaining). It is my hope that we make it through this awkward situation as soon as possible. Will I still have a job here when all is said and done? I'd like to believe that even if I don't get the position I applied for Harvard would not turn my talents and expertise away, but whatever happens, I am no longer afraid.

Also, I'm several belt notches thinner...

Problem solved!

Breaking News: #MBTA counts loose change dropped onto subway tracks, announces $133.4 Billion surplus

— Tom Bruno (@oodja) April 1, 2012

The Dogfood Chronicles: "Speculation" by Edmund Jorgensen

A couple of weeks ago I wrote here about my pledge only to read self-published fiction in 2012, an experiment in what is known as "dogfooding," whereby an individual or company opts to use its own product in a vote of confidence. Since I have decided to make an honest attempt to self-publish my fiction (at Amazon, Smashwords, and elsewhere), I thought it was only fair that I should purchase and read the works of my self-pubbed peers, as otherwise I would be something of a hypocrite.

After announcing my intentions to eat nothing but self-publishing dogfood for an entire year, I was asked whether I was planning to review the books I read during my experiment. Fellow self-pubbed authors wished me well and wanted to follow my progress, and even people who regarded this idea as little more than a masochistic exercise in literary self-flagellation were nonetheless rather curious to see how it would turn out. Thus the Dogfood Chronicles were born.

My first review is Speculation, a literary thriller by Edmund Jorgensen. Before I proceed, however, I must confess that this book just so happens to be the self-published novel of a dear friend from college. He and I both decided to take the plunge in offering our books on Amazon around the same time. Lest I be accused of using this review to garner Edmund any undue sales advantage, however, I should point out that Speculation is currently blowing up the paid Kindle rankings in Amazon - right now he's #144 - entirely on the merits of his own storytelling.

Andrew, a struggling professor of philosophy at an unnamed Boston university, is presented with a conundrum when his best friend from college "Sothum" dies and wills him a choice between receiving ten million dollars or the contents of a sealed envelope. Does Andrew take the safe bet so that he never need worry about money again, or does he take the envelope, whose contents are a complete mystery?

While his wife Cheryl sees this as a simple decision - i.e., take the money and don't look back - she begrudgingly indulges Andrew's natural curiosity as he tries to figure out what could possibly be worth passing up a fortune. Is it even more money, or better yet the secret of Sothum's financial success, or is the envelope empty, a final cruel practical joke from beyond the grave? The fact that Sothum is implicated in the disappearance of a mutual friend (a writer named Buddy) only serves to complicate Andrew's choice.

The more that Andrew investigates into Sothum's weird and reclusive life, the deeper he finds himself drawn into a philosophical puzzle which threatens not just the stability of his marriage but his own mental health as well. Will he follow his best friend all the way down the rabbit hole to satisfy his need to know the truth at any cost, or will Andrew leave Sothum's final riddle unsolved and choose life, love, and sanity instead?

Author Edmund Jorgensen sets the bar high with his debut novel, but Speculation delivers on its promise. Jorgensen paces his story masterfully, interweaving bittersweet college reminiscences with a gradually unfolding mystery, all the while raising the emotional stakes with every chapter and new revelation. This progression is executed in such a subtle fashion that when Sothum's at-first almost sophomoric meditations on the meaning of life, chance, and fate suddenly take on a very real and truly terrifying aspect, the reader is blindsided by the transformation.

Despite these elements of suspense, Speculation is at its heart an Intellectual Bromance, in the grand tradition of Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum. Indeed, Andrew, Sothum, and their third friend Buddy are as entertainingly clever and inextricably doomed as Eco's Belbo, Diotallevi and Casaubon were. The downward spiral of intense friendship also calls to mind the philosophically rich but emotionally damaged relationship between Louis and Lestat in Anne Rice's Interview With the Vampire. In a less capable writer's hands, Speculation's choice would never have been a real head-scratcher, but the author's genius is that despite yourself you can't help but find that you have been seduced by Sothum's demented brilliance in perfect lockstep with Andrew's first-person narrator. Jorgensen not only captures the cerebral intoxication and Platonic intensity that so frequently occurs in one's heady years as a young impressionable college student, but he turns them against you so expertly that you can only admire the artfulness of the betrayal.

Is there any downside to this book at all? I'll be damned if I can find one. Not only is Speculation engaging and intellectually satisfying, it is also extraordinarily well-written, edited, and professionally polished. So why isn't this book already on the shelves of your local bookstore? In private conversation, the author confided that literary agents generally had high praise for his manuscript when he made the query rounds, but even the most kindly-disposed said they'd be at a loss to market it. Their loss, to be sure!

That a book of this quality would never see the light of day is the reason I decided to take a chance on self-publishing myself, and I'm heartened that my friend Edmund has also decided to make the leap. Even if you have been lukewarm on self-pubbed authors thus far, I strongly recommend that you give Speculation a chance. If this first review in the Dogfood Chronicles is any indication of just how much undiscovered literary talent there is out there in the so-called "digital slush pile," I'm in for a very rewarding year of reading...

How to debrief yourself

So last week I went to the ILLiad International Conference in Virginia Beach to sequester myself by the sea along with a few hundred of my closest resource sharing colleagues to share ideas, compare best practices, and try our hardest to resist the siren call of the ocean. Despite ever-shrinking budgets, short staffs, and the (albeit painfully incremental) progress in virtual conference attendance I'm still a huge fan of the real deal, as I firmly believe that the physical experiences of travel, serendipitous conversations, and late-night bull and/or brainstorming sessions over a couple of drinks by the fire pit is an experience that the digital world can not yet fully replicate.

No offense intended to Second Life, but actually going somewhere else other than your office for several days also means that you may fully immerse yourself in an alternate reality so that your conference experience may be transformative as well as edifying. There's a certain magic at work at a good conference that makes you almost intoxicated with all of the new possibilities that are revealed by simply getting a glimpse of what other people in your field are doing, thinking, and aspiring towards. But how do you keep that magic alive, once you return to your daily grind? This is a challenge that I've struggled with over the years, but I think I've finally made a breakthrough in bottling up your conference magic and making it a renewable resource of inspiration.

When you do finally get back to work, before you do anything else of substance and definitely before you attempt to dig yourself out of your email, your inbox, or whatever it is that has piled up in your absence (trust me- a few more hours of accumulation won't harm anyone) go back over your conference notes in their entirety. I like to use Twitter as my preferred form of note-taking at conferences, as not only am I following the conference hashtag anyway, but by going back and cutting-and-pasting everything posted to that hashtag I can capture not just my own conference notes but everyone else's as well. This can be especially useful if you are at a conference with multiple tracks, many of which you may wanted to take but couldn't due to scheduling constraints.

So what I do is take the whole Tweetstream for the conference period, copy it into Word as text only, then paste that again into Notepad - actually I use Notepad++ because I like its additional editing functionality - so I can go through each individual Tweet line by line. Then I edit this text for content, deleting all of the interpersonal Tweets (and most of the jokes) until I've boiled it down to useful information for both myself and my colleagues at work.

While I'm going through this editing process, I will inevitably stumble across ideas I'd like to follow up on, interesting books I should read that were mentioned by other presenters, and colleagues whom I will remember to email to ask about X, Y, and Z. Assuming that most of these tasks are simple enough to do in a minute or two, I will do them as I edit, so that I don't table the thought and forget about it, as there's nothing worse than being inspired by a good idea at a conference and then completely failing to explore it once you get home.

While I'm making this pass through the Tweetstream, I can't help but recapture a lot of the enthusiasm and excitement of the conference itself - this is a huge shot in the arm for me, especially when I've just gotten back and am vulnerable to the post-conference blues - not to mention hashtag withdrawal! As I send out emails, Facebook notifications, and Tweets to follow up with other attendees I'm hoping that I'm sharing a little of the magic as well, and then when I organize my Tweet notes into a conference update for my colleagues here at work (I'm also planning to share my ILLiad 2012 notes online) I will keep the inspiration flowing in a positive feedback loop.

As luck would have it, I actually had a job interview here at Harvard today as well. While going to a library conference is generally a good way to get into the right frame of mind for an interview, I found that reviewing my conference notes this morning really energized me about the issues I ended up talking about. I'm curious to see if anyone else out there has any additional practical strategies for keeping the "conference buzz" going after the fun is over - if so, please feel free to share!

Morning shadows

It's the little things that make this commute worth it...

Whoa, I'm halfway there

This week I weighed in at 237 pounds, which means I've lost a total of 37 pounds so far on my 2012 Make It Happen Diet. It also means that I am officially halfway to my goal of getting down to 200 pounds!

I had a moment of panic last week when for the first time not only did I manage not to lose any weight, but I'd actually succeeded in gaining back a half pound. Granted, thanks to my tooth troubles I had a very unusual week, and despite the fact that you'd imagine an inability to chew would translate into even more weight loss I seem to have found a way to get all of the calories I needed and then some. Looking back on what I ate I'm pretty sure the sudden influx of carbs was to blame - Weight Watchers points or no points, I'm now convinced that pasta is more or less the Devil - but I'm sure it didn't exactly help that I was entirely sedentary for the better part of that week as well.

Whatever the reasons, I was genuinely worried that I'd reached some sort of plateau in my diet, so I was rather anxious about weighing in on Sunday. While I know I should be overjoyed that I've even lost as many pounds as I have at this point, I really want to reach my goal (and maybe then some), so needless to say I was quite happy to see that I am squarely back on track.

Now all I have to do is manage not to stuff myself silly during this week's ILLiad International Conference down in Virginia Beach - no easy task, mind you, as the host Atlas Systems is a firm believer in Southern hospitality! Wish me luck...

Eating the self-pub dogfood

My name is Tom Bruno, and until this year I was a self-publishing hypocrite.

You see, although I had decided to take my fantasy novel Confessions of a Gourmand - which I had shopped around to prospective agents only to get a couple of encouraging words but nothing more - and offer it online as a Kindle edition through Amazon, up to that point I had only read one self-published book (which a friend had written a couple of years ago, way ahead of the self-pub revolution) and nothing else, always opting for traditionally-published fiction instead whenever it came time to decide on something new to read.

That I didn't see this for the hypocrisy that it was is testament to how deeply ingrained the bias against self-publication is among would-be authors such as myself. Even now many aspiring writers would still rather keep editing, workshopping, and re-writing their manuscripts and querying the ever-shrinking pool of literary agents or publishing houses in hopes of landing a contract rather than attach the stigma of self-publication to their books. To these defenders of the traditional publishing model, self-publication is nothing more than a vast digital slush pile that floods the market with writing that didn't deserve to be published in the first place and drowns out "legitimate" authors from getting more attention than they would have gotten otherwise.

Or so the argument goes. This post is not about debating whether or not this is in fact true, although my own personal belief is that quality will always find its way to the top, and that (in the words of a fellow self-published author) "I'd much rather have 10000 people write crap and enjoy doing what they're doing than 9999 people never let their work see the light of day". No, this is about practicing what I preach. If I truly feel that self-publishing has become as legitimate a path for writers as the traditional publication route, then shouldn't I be supporting self-published authors with my dollars and my reading time?

There's a term for this: Dogfooding. Eating your own dogfood is a concept that goes back to the 1980's, supposedly from the old ads for Alpo dog food featuring Lorne Greene, who made a point of saying in the commercial that he fed his own dogs Alpo. It was a Microsoft executive who coined the actual phrase, however, expanding the concept beyond actual dogfood into a general vote of confidence in one's product by promoting its use by your own employees. Dogfooding is therefore not just an exercise in public relations, but an active proof of concept.

I've decided to adopt this idea and apply it to self-publishing - to that end, I've resolved that I will only read self-published fiction in 2012. So far I have read three self-pubbed works this year: two novels and a novella. One was a literary thriller, another a fantasy offering, and the the third was a post-apocalyptic science fiction tale. All three were excellent, and each could just as easily have been published via traditional means, had the authors chosen to pursue that route.

While I'm sure that during my yearlong experiment in dogfooding I will no doubt find myself forced to wolf down an unappetizing clunker or two, I must say that I am encouraged by the quality of these initial readings. Perhaps there's more good stuff to be found out there than self-publishing's many detractors would have us believe...

Dens sanus in corpore sano

A funny thing happened on my way to Making It Happen in 2012... I forgot that while focusing on externalities such as my weight was all well and good and entirely overdue, being thinner wasn't going to amount to a hill of beans if I didn't address other health problems that were perhaps less immediately visible but no less important to my overall well-being.

Take, for example, Tooth #19- or as I like to call it, the Root Canal of the Living Dead.

To say that I had had an unpleasant root canal experience would be an understatement. It was over ten years ago and I had woken up one morning to find myself in excruciating pain. When I could finally get to my dentist, he informed me that a lifetime of grinding my teeth had resulted in a cracked molar which had become infected and would require an emergency root canal in order to save the tooth.

A few hours later I am whisked away to the local endodontist, who begins work only to discover (SPOILERS: Do not continue reading if you wince at the sound of a dentist's drill!) that my aggrieved tooth is so "hot" that they can't actually get it numb without drilling until they hit the root and injecting it directly with anesthetic. This wasn't just as unpleasant as it sounds, but far, far worse, and was without a doubt the most pain I'd ever experienced in my life to date.

Until last Friday, that is. While I'd been warned by several dentists that my root canal was in danger of failing and that I would either need to make a return visit to the endodontist or have the tooth itself extracted, the combined fear of additional agony and the prospect of several additional bank-breaking copays meant that kept putting off the inevitable until... well, the inevitable happened.

Last week I found myself in an ever-increasing amount of discomfort until late Thursday night when the discomfort ramped up suddenly into blinding pain. Silly me, I actually thought for a moment that I'd be able to tough it out with ibuprofen, ice packs, and some Orajel, but sure enough I was back in the dentist's chair by Saturday, and walked out of the office with a prescription for antibiotics and painkillers, an emergency consult with my endodontist, and my tail tucked decidedly between my legs.

You see, folks, I dun goofed. Making It Happen is an all or nothing prospect. Either I commit myself to radical, transformative change on every front or I might as well not change anything at all. This includes tackling all of the problems that I've always allowed to fester (such as my wayward tooth) because I felt like I never had the time, the resources, or the psychic bandwidth to address. But there is always time for change, if you make time for it. My health does matter, and ensuring good health can only be money well spent in the long run.

As far as committing the psychic bandwidth, this is perhaps still the hardest part. I've struggled for so long on so many fronts that sometimes I let myself believe that it is my lot in life simply to struggle, when all the while success is right there within my grasp if only I can muster to courage to seize it with both hands and never let it go. Okay, Tooth #19, I get it now. It's time to be bold. Time to Make It Happen across the board - no exceptions, no excuses!

The lesson has been learned, thank you very much- now be a good little molar and stop bothering me for another 10-12 years...

De-Wookiefication

I promise my wife that I'd get a haircut once I hit my 10% weight loss goal. I figured it was a good time to see what I actually looked like under all of that fur...

Ten foods to lose weight by

One of the things that's helped me lose almost thirty pounds (and counting!) since starting my diet back at the beginning of January is having a small arsenal of "go-to" foods that I can eat when the urge to snack strikes. Some of them are what Weight Watchers would refer to as Zero Point foods - i.e., foods that don't count against my daily allowance of points for meals - but others are simply items that are low in fat or carbohydrates. Since I love food and would inevitably self-sabotage any attempt to stick to a diet based on austerity just on basic principle, it's important that whatever foods I do resort to as an alternative to, say, a box of Cheez-Its are sufficiently delicious in their own right.

After about two months of successful dieting, these are my Top 10 alternative snacks, in no particular order:

1. Giardineira. I'm a big fan of pickled anything, so when I'm hungry one of my favorite things to eat even when I'm not trying to lose weight is a nice helping of pickled garden vegetables. There's a Lebanese company called Chtaura that makes giardineira with baby eggplant and turnips as well as the standard accompaniment of cauliflower, carrots, and other veggies - whenever I see their stuff at the local supermarket, I snap it up.

1a. (Regular) Pickles. See #1. Sometimes a nice big crunchy kosher dill is just what the doctor ordered.

2. Pop Chips. These potato puff things are surprisingly low in all of the bad stuff, and the serving size is actually large enough that it doesn't feel like a cruel joke to eat them (unlike other salty snacks). Also, these just happen to go splendidly with...

3. Trader Joe's Red Pepper Spread. I love this stuff like crack. 'Nuff said!

4. Hummus. Any store-bought kind will do, although I will also make my own when I feel like breaking out the food processor. Instead of pita bread or chips, I like to dip them in...

5. Raw carrots. Not "baby carrots," mind you, but the real deal. I don't even peel them, for the full Bugs Bunny experience.

6. Raw celery. This is the salty yang to the sweet carrot's yin. Also good with hummus.

7. Sugar Snap Peas. A bowl of fresh sugar snap peas, raw and with a light sprinkling of salt is the perfect snack. Raw green beans are an acceptable substitute as well.

8. Clementines. Why are these things not in season all year round? By far these are my favorite "snack" fruit, and are the perfect 3pm pick-me-up at the office.

9. Cabot 75% Reduced Fat Cheddar. I've said it here before, and I'll say it again - I am very particular about my cheeses, especially cheddar, but somehow the Cabot Creamery managed to make a low-fat cheese which does not suck, which means I can have a reasonable amount of it and not feel I've train-wrecked my diet.

10. Hormel Turkey Pepperoni. Okay, despite all the rabbit food above I still do occasionally consume meat from time to time, and with a service size of 17 slices this stuff goes a long way at snacktime.

Honorary Mention: Smartfood, a.k.a. The Only Thing In The Library Vending Machine I Can Still Eat With A Clear Conscience.

So there you have it. This list definitely beats unflavored rice cakes, that's for sure!