Golden Rule Jones

Golden Rule Jones joins the Emerging Writers Network's latest lit-blogger roundtable:

What do you hope to accomplish with your efforts?

Sam: I travel a lot on business and I got tired of missing readings I wanted to see because the local papers only list them a week in advance. So I started keeping my own list. Then I thought, why not share it via the web? I also thought it would be fun to see how many readings of serious fiction, poetry, and criticism we have in Chicago in a given year. (Answer: 500.) About a year after I started, I discovered other literary blogs via the Literary Saloon, and then was inspired to post more frequently. Lately I've been a little more reticent. What was the question?

Chicago's funny in that you have to live here for ten years to know what's going on. Arts organizations of all kinds are just awful at publicizing what they do. The papers generally don't care either, except for our local free weekly, The Reader. So if I have any objective it's to help publicize Chicago's great literary scene. My opinions are your FREE bonus.

(Later...)

...it has allowed me to bore distant people instead of those nearby who could do me more direct harm.

I couldn't have expressed that final point more perfectly.