Happy ’round the bend day and wishes for a good Rosh Hashanah to my Jewish friends and extended family.

I appreciate the love and support you all have been showing Roads Lesser Traveled, as the visit stats just keep on climbing. Corny, but so so true; you all are the reason I keep this thing going.

Here’s what I’ve got on my giddy little mind this week for FTF!

One: The NFL is back! I never like to say “football is back” at this time of year like most Americans do, since the Canadian Football League gets started while the NFL is still in training camp. Baltimore once had a CFL team, the Stallions, which went to the Grey Cup both seasons the league and won it the second time. Love the CFL, even those nutty one-point rouges!

It’s that time of year football fans take possession of their team like they’re the 54th man or woman on the roster. I’ve written a couple of essays about the “we,” “us” and “our” syndrome of osmosis football fans (on both the professional and collegiate levels) inject and project. Example, “We’re gonna kick your butts this week!” I’m serious. Watch the psyche of an entire city ride its hopes of weekly pacification upon the padded shoulders of their favorite teams. You can measure a city’s thermometer based on whether their football team won that week or not.

For NFL Week 1, the team I root for got stomped. Oh well, old me would’ve been raging and smashing the remote. New me is like, meh, see what happens next week, I’ve got a story to write. We had a family football party watching the Ravens look pretty sharp against the Houston Texas, while every Jets backer in the land is no doubt still in hangover mode from the season loss of Aaron Rodgers, predicted to be New York’s savior. Don’t give up yet on Zach Wilson, Jets Nation. It was a great season of Hard Knocks following those J-E-T-S Jets Jets Jets, and let’s give Xavier Gipson a huge hand for making the team with such a gracious smile on the show, then becoming Mr. Electricity in that OT shocker against Buffalo.

Two: As I take down the second half of Stephen King’s Fairy Tale (gotta get a move on, since Holly’s now on the market and heading my way for Christmas from my dear friend, Paulette), I’ve been reading a handful of hit-and-run novellas from horror writers W.H. Chizmar (son of Richard) and John Boden as I attempt to nestle into a family of writers in the genre.

After picking up John Boden’s Jedi Summer, I had a nice little distant chat with him and immediately pounced on Boden’s latest, Snarl, which just came out last week. Boden has a gift of prose unlike any I’ve seen in quite some time. I loved both of these books, but Snarl was next level genius in the vein of horror mogul Joe R. Lansdale with a haunted, guilt-ridden, highly vulnerable author protagonist nobody’s ever attempted. There’s beauty to find amidst the angst, ugliness and roundabout betrayals and that jolt of an ending, crikey. Keep your tissues handy.

Image courtesy of flylanddesigns.com

Three: I spent this week writing a baseball-themed horror story titled “Backdoor Breaker.” I’ll wait until someone picks it up for publication before talking more about it, but I will confess I needed four drafts to make it a true horror story, since my love of the game prevailed in the original draft. I’ll be seeking a home for “Backdoor Breaker” and oh yeah, did I mention I have a new novel coming out soon, Revolution Calling?

Four: This is as much to motivate myself as I usually do these fitness pictures to inspire others. I have focused so much on running the past couple months and those results paid off, for sure. It took TJ to remind me I was neglecting the rest of my regimen, though. Largely because I let three back pulls this year wreck my head.

Let’s face it, not every day is waking up like it’s a Godzilla day. Sometimes you wake up feeling like it’s a smashed Mothra day. Today, though, is most definitely a Godzilla day.

Five: In exactly one month, TJ and I will be married. Just sayin’

–Ray Van Horn, Jr.