A Stumble, Rather Than a Fall

Yesterday marked 14 years since I began writing and editing The Rap Sheet as a blog. (It had previously been a newsletter distributed by January Magazine.) When I first accepted the challenge of commenting on, recording, and occasionally helping to better illuminate the history and evolution of crime fiction, I had no realistic understanding of the time and commitment all of that would require. I had no idea of the friendships composing this blog would bring into my life, or the rewards and frustrations it would offer.

The frustrations have seemed overwhelming of late. As I noted recently, almost all of the videos I’ve uploaded to my blog-publishing service—Blogger—since 2006, suddenly disappeared in mid-April. Efforts to solve this mystery and undo the damage in a comprehensive fashion have been unsuccessful. The most likely explanation seems to be a technical one: Blogger has made so many platform changes over the years, that those video uploads of mine are finally no longer acceptable via my version of the software. Which may also explain why I am unable to upload new videos to Blogger.

I have been reduced to relocating the original videos, either online or on my computer (thank heavens I’m a pack rat about these things!), and re-embedding them or—the worst-case scenario—installing them on YouTube so that I can then “share” them to The Rap Sheet. Ironically, the reason I took Blogger up on its offer to let me upload videos directly to its platform in the first place, was that YouTube has been an unreliable partner in the past, capriciously deleting videos to which I wished to link. I thought I was being clever in avoiding such failures, but instead set myself up for a worse result.

There was a point, shortly after this catastrophic failure of my video clips, that I considered shutting down The Rap Sheet. The thought of having to reconstruct so much of what already existed before April seemed daunting. This spell of intense discouragement lasted for more than a week, as I struggled to shrug off my despair and ignore the many gaping holes in past blog posts, kept plugging away at work, and eventually reached the stage where my long passion for blogging here, and my determination not to be defeated by electronic snags, overcame my impulse to just give up and do something else. I feel odd admitting this, but it was largely thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic and the consequent slack it created in my work schedule that I found time enough to begin the rebuilding process.

As my grandfather always used to say, when facing large and small hurdles, “It could be worse.” And I suppose that’s true.

I realized long ago that I am rather proud of The Rap Sheet, and that I want it to be part of my writing legacy. I want it to be a permanent Internet fixture, if that is possible. Although I try to be conscientious about fixing or eliminating broken links (caused when a Web site, blog, or single Web page ceases to exist), I can’t completely overcome those problems. But I don’t want to see this page riddled with “Video Is Unavailable” notices where film and TV clips belong. So, although it will take time and diligence, I am determined to repair all of the chaos caused by this season’s apparent technical issues.

Meanwhile, thank you for sticking with The Rap Sheet all this time. I hope that by the blog’s 15th birthday, both the novel coronavirus and these aggravating computer obstacles will be well behind us.