Before and even after I moved to Alabama, one thing that I enjoyed doing in my free time was reviewing all of the latest Star Trek titles from Pocket Books. From 2002 to 2006 I was the regular book and media reviewer for TrekWeb.com, one of the largest Star Trek fan-maintained websites on the Internet. Part of its success came because of my many contributions to the site in the forms of regular book reviews (sometimes I would have as many as three or four per week, that's how up to date I was!); DVD reviews of many of the different Star Trek season sets, Battlestar Galactica, and miscellaneous films and TV series; and on occasion interviews with writers (when my schedule permitted it).
Unfortunately, I had been forced into a corner by my wife where I had to give it up. In her words, she said, "It's either me or Star Trek." So she forced me to throw it all out, and I walked away from it by the end of 2006. All of the DVDs, not to mention the books and magazines that were in the house, even the Starship Creator CD-ROMs and the CD collections of Rich Handley's excellent comic strip compilations - all gone. On rare occasion I would return for an occasional DVD product review, but otherwise that was the extent of it. I had been pretty much forced to give it all up.
Flash forward to 2008. My wife and I are going through a separation at this time, one that I wish I could say could be peacefully resolved and result in us getting back together, but at this point it doesn't look like that's going to be the case. As a result of a job loss that was beyond my control, months of struggling to make ends meet, and a mother-in-law who had repeatedly made false accusations against me (all of which my wife believed and wouldn't stand with me to oppose), I returned to Mississippi to start job-searching once again, which has resulted in a number of good leads through job agencies and direct applications, and I haven't stopped. I'm also making plans to return to Alabama to bring my three-year-old daughter to live with me here in Mississippi. My mother and I have been in contact with our attorneys, one here and one in Alabama, and both have indicated that I have an equal right as my daughter's father and that I can move her to Mississippi. When that will be, I don't know.
In the meantime, I've been reconnecting with some old friends... namely, the crews of the starships Enterprise and Voyager, among others. I've caught a few episodes on TV, and the majority of the novels are still at my mother's house. There's also a few comics, I would say about ten percent of the complete collection, still intact. I'm in the process of trading other comics out for the remaining Star Trek comics to rebuild my collection. I'm also looking at getting the series and films on DVD once again, which I know will be costly and will take a long time to reacquire. Not to mention getting hold of those missing books and keeping up with the current and upcoming titles.
Which brings me to this... since launching this website last year I've been thinking about branching out into conducting book reviews as well as DVD and CD reviews. Make it all three of those forms of media. I think it would only be a natural progression to expand my reviewing skills on this blog site. I'm hoping to get in contact with someone in the PR department at Pocket Books to get me back on the mailing list to get all of the latest and current Star Trek titles for review here - hopefully I'll be successful. If that happens, then look for book reviews here in the near future, along of course with the latest DVD product reviews.
All I can do is try. When you've got nothing much left, all you can do is pick up and start over again. We'll see what happens.
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