Rule of Reason's Carnival

Today's a big day for Toiler. My alter-ego has been featured on Nicholas Provenzo's latest Carnival of the Objectivists. His blog is Rule of Reason. Thanks, Nicholas.

It's kind of funny, because I've been toiling away over here (get it?) in my own little corner of the blog world, happy as a conch, not at all concerned about my relative obscurity, when all of a sudden a bunch of people are looking at me and saying, "Hey, dude, what are you doing?" And I'm saying, "Oh, hi. Well, I'm pretty much writing about writing, gushing about great art, getting torqued about dumb words, that sort of thing. Stick around if you like it."

I appreciate the exposure, mainly because I've always been open to meeting other hard-working writers of Romantic fiction through my blog. (By now, though, I'd be amazed if more than one or two of them are out there to be found.)

Before I started Acid Free Paper, I didn't see any reason to communicate with other writers. I wouldn't say that now, not after writing fiction pretty much full-time for the last two years. I'm beginning to realize how much hard-working people can benefit from each other's enthusiasm and insights, even in a creative job like writing fiction. Trouble is, very, very few other writers seem to be on my wavelength. The best ones that I've met so far write mysteries, sci-fi, and fantasy. None write mainstream literature.

A New Romantic literary movement appears to be decades away still. For me, it feels a bit like I'm writing in a cultural vacuum. After that initial supernova that was Ayn Rand, mainstream literature seems to have shrunk back into darkness. It's going to be a long, slow road out of it — one writer at a time.