Awake Again, or:

I've been meaning to reactivate this blog for a couple months now, but as usual I've been sitting around waiting for the perfect comprehensive re-launch post to spontaneously type itself into the browser window. No more.

A number of factors prompt my return. Two prompt me to re-establish my "home" on the web, and will prompt further clean-up and refocusing in the months to come:

1. I'm getting more active in translation, reviewing, and publishing
2. I'm establishing more local connections, which (sometimes mysteriously) feed and support my . . . let's call them trans-local activities (since "global" sounds a bit much)

And two make this a great time to get out and get more involved in determining the future of my "industry" (which may take the form of some initiatives of my own, which of course would be discussed and announced here):

1. The Occupy movement has re-opened discussion of cooperative and other post-capitalist ways of organizing work
2. Publishing, prompted largely by e-books, continues to transform itself

So I'm going to start blogging again—but I'm refocusing on:

• new writing (usually fiction, or at least narrative) in English as well as French, Italian, and Portuguese
• and how it gets from writer to reader, by way of publishers, translators, designers, reviewers, bookstores, audiobooks, e-book devices, and so on

I'm sure I'll stray from time to time into film, travel, type, and food, and of course I'll tend to read and write about books that concern puzzles, cognition, design, and my other hobbyhorses. But the core will be books. It's what I do, and it's time to stop waiting for someone else to approve or bless my ideas and projects. Here I go! Or, equally: I go here!