If you’re new here, don’t worry. So am I.
First and foremost: The name of this blog is derived from my Twitter handle @RobOfWar, which itself was derived from a nickname I earned in college during a single night of drunken bowling, or, as the professionals call it, bowling. The name didn’t really stick, but I’ve been using it ever since for things such as this. Thus, after many minutes of deliberation about the ponderous pretension and possible misleading nature of calling this space The War Journal, The Of War Journal was born. Huzzah.
A little about me: I’ve been telling stories for as long as I can remember, and writing them down for almost as long. I was fortunate enough to attend a high school that had three writing course electives -- Intro to Creative Writing, Advanced Creative Writing, and Science Fiction Writing -- and through those found a way to attend summer writing camps at Southwestern Texas State University (now, simply Texas State University) before graduating. In college, I studied RTVF (Radio, Television, and Film), but ultimately majored in Creative Writing and received a minor in History, because I apparently hate money and success. While attending the University of North Texas, I was published in and edited their literary journal The North Texas Review (not in the same year, duh-doy), and had a short-lived column about the making-of a student film in the school paper, The North Texas Daily, called “Riding Shotgun at 24-Frames per Second.” I’ve written and published independent comics (print and web) since 2008, and have been writing for the movie/TV/culture blog Pajiba.com since 2011.
Outside of Myspace or Facebook I’ve never had my own blog or even personal website. I’ll be 30 in August, so this has felt long overdue. What you’ll find on The Of War Journal are various musings from short stories to essays/lists on pop culture to the occasional review and hopefully more-than-sporadic updates about my comics work at Gradient Comics, most especially The Unstoppable Force. I also plan to have an ongoing feature called Misanthropic Mythadventures: The Blog from Corporation X, which is all lies, but entertaining ones, that will try to incorporate as much of those things listed above; probably in their most esoteric forms. Because I write for the Pajiba, every once in a while I’ll run a series creatively titled The Best of Pajiba that will feature my favorite, and hopefully still relevant, articles from that site. New Pajiba posts will pop up here a day later than they do there – like the one right below this! – so keep your eyeballs peeled like that scene in Clockwork Orange, or that scene in "The Simpsons" with Bart, or that mysterious room in that one episode of "LOST" that one time.
I hope you’re even a quarter as excited to be here as I am, because if you are, then you’re pretty damn excited. Also, scared. Let’s do our best not screw this up, shall we?
Good night, and good luck,
Rob (Of War) Payne
