New About Page

Wait.

An about page should read like a resume.

There is only one place to get these horoscopes:

As a fully independent writer and astrologer, lots of love, care, as well as my own blood, sweat, and sometimes my own heartbreaking tears all gets poured into my work. Called many names, these horoscopes are eerily accurate at times, weirdly prescient, or, even occasionally, incomprehensible — if you enjoy what you read, please support my work. Sign-up here:

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Coasting southward, I looked up and there was a billboard for a brand of vodka, “Austin’s original craft vodka.” Might’ve been tequila, I can’t recall. Before Torchy’s was even an idea, much less a trailer in South Austin?

Back in a time when Shiner and Lone Star were the closest thing to local, craft beer? Those are the roots — Austin — Texas — and beyond? The original craft horoscopes. Constructed by hand, using only locally-sourced, all-organic, free-range metaphors and allegory.

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In medias res (The story so far)

The bigger challenge in explaining who and what this is about?

It starts in the middle. There is no end.

The middle starts somewhere in old Austin, a spot that’s since been paved over. Land of myth, mystery, and the magical place where cowboys and hippies peacefully co-existed.

The first horoscopes appeared in print when I was a student, those first efforts strictly as an exercise. Drifting around the southwest, I landed in Austin, and the horoscopes, writing as the Fishing Guide to the Stars took hold. Vilified, cursed, praised, and otherwise complemented1?

I always thought of the horoscopes and the web page as a hybrid business, part DIY, garage-built, and part slicked-up, glossy magazine. To be fair, the real version is probably in between a ’zine and a weekly broadsheet paper.

Support the work by subscribing, with some extra benefits thrown in for loyal readers.

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In medias res (The story so far)

The longer version?

TexMex place, with a butcher-paper tablecloth, as a nod towards more refined sentiment, and crayons. Me, and some friends, they were half-baked, with a half-basket of chips still uneaten, and hot sauce spilled, drafted up an idea, me, in a bass boat, with a fishing pole, and the 12 signs of the zodiac dangling from the pole, hence, “Fishing Guide to the Stars.”

That concept launched the first web presences, on a back server with a grad student at UT (University of Texas, Austin). He graduated and moved on, but that begat a long line of web servers, with remnants of the code I hammered together back then, bits and pieces of that code still exist in on the site — to this day. That first real “server” was a shady South Austin location when websites were complicated to erect.

In medias res (The story so far)

Getting to where it is now, landing in the middle of events? Along the way, the monthly became weekly, the weekly got syndicated online and in a few newspapers, and the rest is a long history.

    Some of the material in the middle is rather muddled.

While a nod towards those who have the paved the way for me? The idea of “horoscopes” centered around a framework of the 12 signs of the Western Tropical Zodiac, that’s been around for thousands of years. My interpretation is what’s different.

In the last twenty years or so, I got to where I would always pluck a quote from Shakespeare’s canon, as an introduction, or part of one.

The original format was a few hundred words — the weekly was right at a thousand words, and in the last years, it’s found a comfortable spot north of 2K words in a week, but that varies greatly. Some weeks, there’s not a lot, and some weeks, I waxed eloquent, loquacious, or verbose.

The trick is, I’ve been plying my way through cyberspace, with words, as tied to planets and the signs, for a while, and I rather enjoy it. Therein is my answer.

People show up looking for the meaning of life, the why, the wherefore. I can point in the direction, but I can’t walk your path, and this is about metaphorical guidance.

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  1. Yes, that’s spelled right. Not “complimented,” which implies praise, but “complemented,” which means “goes along with.” Sort of. The problems with my grammar, huh.

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