Regular readers have probably noticed that I never talk much about my day job as editor of our little weekly newspaper. But I do get asked about it from time to time, and since the gig is often responsible for my absences here, I probably owe at least a little explanation of just what it is I’m doing when I disappear.

For starters, as anyone who has ever worked in small-town journalism will tell you, the title “editor” is somethat misleading. Scratch that. Very misleading. The editor of a weekly like ours doesn’t sit behind a desk and dish out assignments to a staff of reporters, send photographers out to get the important shots, and buff up rough copy until it turns into glittering journalistic gems. Sometimes a weekly will have several reporters on staff, but just as often the editor is it. That’s certainly the case where I work, where I am the entire news staff. I report and write the stories. I shoot the pictures. I type, proofread, copyedit and rewrite all the press releases, letters, announcements and so forth that pour into the office. I also lay out the paper (which, believe it or not, we still do by cut-and-paste), and do a few other things to boot. Except for the ads, which I’m not involved with, about ninety to ninety-five percent of everything in the paper each week originates with me, is typed by me, edited or rewritten by me, or had some other type of direct involvement from me.

As you can probably guess, all of that usually takes a fair amount of time. There are many long days, many nights spent covering local government meetings, many weekends, many holidays, and always, always, always the deadline. It’s not your usual creative writer’s kind of deadline, either — you know, where you’re late with the book and call your editor to beg for an extra two weeks, or running behind on the story so it gets bumped back to the next issue of the magazine. This is a deadline that is unmoving, unchanging and absolutely unforgiving. You get the paper out every Wednesday no matter what else is going on in town, in the world, or in your own life. I’ve gone without sleep for two days to get out the paper. I’ve skipped trips to get out the paper. I’ve turned down enticing invitations to get out the paper. I’ve missed family activities and milestones to get out the paper. I’ve written when there were no words left to get out the paper. Once, many years ago now, I even showed up on Wednesday with pneumonia and a fever of 104 to get out the paper.

And here may be the real reason I haven’t written much about my day job, because just talking about it can sound an awful lot like whining. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not opposed to whining about my work — I’ve been known to whine about it quite a bit, as a matter of fact — but I usually try not to do it in public.

So, no, I’m not whining. Really. I’m just kind of laying it out, warts and all, for those who are curious.

I don’t always like my day job. Sometimes, truth be told, I really sort of hate it. There are days (or weeks, or months) that I feel myself teetering along a fraying tightrope stretched above a yawning canyon of total burnout. But there are times I actually do kind of like it. It’s never boring, and that’s a big plus. No matter how much of it is exactly the same week after week, there is always plenty that’s new and interesting, too. I’m proud to be part of an important industry and represent a noble species like the weekly small-town newspaper. I’m proud that our particular paper has been publishing for over 130 years; its pretty humbling to be part of a long, unbroken tradition like that. I’m delighted that we’re still independently owned and that we continue to fight the good fight against all the odds: a readership that is quickly aging and vanishing away, an alarmingly dwindling advertising base, an onslaught of competition from dozens of other sources, an onslaught so intense and unrelenting that even the biggest of the big city dailies are at serious risk, to say nothing of the little hole-in-the-wall rags like ours. Whenever I need a little inspiration to finish an impossible article, a little strength to keep typing, a little extra motivation to get out of bed at 3:30 a.m. Wednesday or pull myself together on Monday and start the whole weekly marathon over again … well, then, those things are usually enough to do it.

And that’s the long and short of it. Mostly long, I guess, longer than I thought it would be. But now you know. And you know that the next time I vanish from here for a few weeks at a time, I haven’t gone away for good. I’ll be back just as soon as the news allows.

I almost forgot to mention that today, February 17, marks this blog’s first birthday. It was one year ago today that I unveiled this site to the world and put up the first several posts.

So, happy birthday to … me, I guess!

And more important, thanks to all of you for hanging around and putting up with my (somewhat too sporadic) outpouring of miscellany and disorder. I hope you found the first year interesting and occasionally worthwhile. It’s been a fun journey so far, and I’m very glad to have you by my side.

Winter continues, long, tough, but beautiful.

My wife took these pictures of our house today, in the midst of our latest “snow event,” which they say could leave ten or twelve inches of new white stuff before it’s finished.

I’m no different than you. When I go to the movies, I don’t like to sit through thirty minutes of coming attractions before getting to the film I actually came to see. It’s the same with DVDs, where one or two trailers are kind of fun but eight or ten are just plain annoying. Still, I do like trailers as a genre, in the same way I really enjoy a well-crafted television commercial. They’re art forms all their own. When done right, they can be easily as entertaining (if not as fulfilling) as longer works.

I also enjoy trailers and commercials for books, like this one for Douglas Clegg’s The Attraction:

Part of my enjoyment comes from the trailers themselves, part from the little thrill of seeing books elevated, however briefly, to the status of films, TV programs and laundry detergent. When you see one of these little gems, or flip on the TV and catch a commercial for the latest paperback bestseller, it almost makes you feel that reading has once again become a mainstream activity. Sure, it may be just an illusion, but it’s fun while it lasts.

While you can find lots of book trailers on sites like YouTube, and scattered around other places on the Web, I wish someone would create a central repository. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of places to find movie trailers, sites like this one and this one and even this one. But I’ve never seen anything similar for clips and commercials and trailers based on books. Is there one? Have I missed it? If you know of something, please let me know.

Oh, and if the Doug Clegg trailer caught your interest, be sure to check out the book itself. Also, you can find more information about Doug and his work, sign up for his newsletter, and find free goodies and other fun stuff at his very cool Web site.

I admit it. I was a Facebook skeptic for a long, long time. After my very brief flirtation with MySpace (which made my eyeballs bleed from the ugliness of the pages, deafened me with useless background music, frustrated me with the lack of customization and inundated me with countless friend requests from would-be musicians and porn stars), I was slow to even set up a Facebook account, let alone actually start using it.

But here’s the weird thing: Once I finally dared to stick my toes in the water and cautiously start playing with my account, it turned out to be not so bad at all. In fact, it turned out to be a whole lot of fun. I’ve reconnected with some old friends and colleagues, met some new ones, discovered some interesting games, and found another great, fairly harmless way to waste time online.

If you’re like I was, thinking you should give Facebook a try but reluctant to do it, you should probably give it a shot. I bet you’ll be pleasantly surprised at the people you find there, which includes a large and active corps of writerly types, unknown, fairly known and really famous. And as long as you’re relatively cautious about the applications you add to your page and don’t get sucked into too many vampire, werewolf and “Oregon Trail” games, you’ll probably survive just fine.

If you’re already on Facebook or plan on getting there soon, look me up. We’ll be friends, swap a few wall posts, send good karma to each other, and have a rousing game of Scrabulous.

I seem to be overwhelmed with good reading lately.

Just for starters, there is Kim Stanley Robinson’s amazing alternate history, The Years of Rice and Salt, which I waited far too many years before reading.

Then there’s Gregory Frost’s brand new novel, Shadowbridge, a thing of beauty that also happens to be the first of a two-book series.

And I haven’t even gotten to Duma Key yet — although even now it is staring at me from across the room, crying to me, taunting me, urging me to pick it up and dive in.

It’s an embarrassment of literary riches, really. I am a lucky reader indeed. I feel blessed.