Tina and I are currently finishing plans for a new joint project that we’ll announce soon. It’s been a while since the awkwardly named RF Seamonsters podcast sputtered out, but that collaboration was largely fueled by our mutual excitement and anxiety about parenthood. Once the kids came, it was difficult to maintain our previous chemistry. Several attempts to restart it failed. Part of the problem was that the RF Seamonsters podcast was started on a lark. It wasn’t planned so much as a spontaneous attempt to do a podcast — and once its original purpose ended, there was really no reason to go through the motions.

This new project is better planned, and we’re planning on building a more professional setup. More later.

Some readers may remember that last year, Restaurant Fuel.com looked a lot different than it does now. This is because the site was running on the PostNuke content management system, and like many PN sites, we got hacked. I hastily threw up an MT site, always intending to redo the template to make it look like the old version of the site. I’m happy to say, that I’m in the process of doing just that — soon enough, Restaurant Fuel will return to its old look and feel, but updated a bit to reflect changes in the tone and focus of the blog.

The second thing to bring up is that back in the late 1990’s Restaurant Fuel was a print ‘zine, created by myself and my wife, Tina Henry-Barrus (aka Tina Seamonster). Although the ‘zine went defunct in 1999, it was always my hope to return to print publishing in some shape or form. This is about to happen, as it’s my plan to resurrect Restaurant Fuel as a small press publishing label. My plan is to produce an anthology, as well as chapbooks to be printed in limited edition print runs. My comic book, The Alberic Heresies, will also likely fall under the Restaurant Fuel imprint. The idea is to follow the indie rock model — great cover art and design, varying formats, and an approach that treats short stories like seven-inch singles.

Keep in mind, this is not going to be a big publishing operation with a huge financial investment. This is going to be micro publishing, mostly on demand, but I’m going to be taking what I learned creating a ‘zine and running a small indie record label and hopefully put a new spin on this. We’ll see how it goes.

Although Restaurant Fuel will remain my personal blog, it will also be the main source of information about the new publishing label. If you visit Tina’s site, I think you’ll see the model I’m shooting for.

So that’s it for now. I’ll have more updates about the new Restaurant Fuel as things progress.

I just approved about two weeks worth of back comments. I apologize for the delay in getting to them — for some reason, I wasn’t receiving the appropriate email notifications.

I’m stuck with a bit a connundrum - do I allow open blogging and then see the blog mobbed with spam, do I force my friends to get TypePad accounts just so I can authenticate their comments, or do I have a moderated comment system?

Alas, I’ve got to stick with the moderated system, flawed though it is. I’ll make sure to check more often in the MoveableType backend from now on.