Here’s where I’ve been. If you’re a metroblogger and you’ve received my e-mail, just move right along, otherwise —

With The Dark Side: A True Crime Weblog which is now my primary blog as linked from here, I’ve discovered that I’m not the only weirdo out there who thinks and writes about high-profile and yes, Cap’n Strickland, occasionally bloody crimes in the news. I started Dark Side in it’s present form on December 29th, 2004. And then, boom, the hits kept a comin’. So now, almost 5 months later, it’s about to click over to 100,000 hits.

I don’t just cover Atlanta-based crimes, but hey, this is Atlanta — there does end up being plenty of local fodder for me to study. The Fulton County Courthouse Massacre [Google search], the disappearance and death of a nurse from Roswell, Leslie Beebe [Atlanta Metroblog search], Jennifer frickin’ “Runaway Bride” Wilbanks [Metroblog search], and yes, the Corbin Case [Dark Side search, Metroblog search].

I found after I started writing about that stuff that folks love it. If “love” is the right word. More than in my personal blog, planethuff.com/steve, where I will take risks style-wise or just be an idiot, I decided that I wanted to write accessible and detailed entries about these crimes for Dark Side, and if they had an internet element, highlight that with mucho linkage. What happened is once I levelled off with 1,000 hits a day, I realized I had a lot of work to do.

All in all the success of a personally-constructed blog is gratifying and a good thing, but it can make you feel weirdly obsessive and paranoid. Add to that the fact that I write about crimes, many of them yet to be solved… I am certain at least one or more suspect has read my blog entries about their deeds, may even be reading as we speak. I know families of victims read, so I take care to be as sensitive as I can when writing about their loved ones. I get disturbing comments the public never sees, because I delete them, and a ton of cryptic e-mail. Fun and scary, but also absorbing, even mentally exhausting.

Add to that a dose of multiple sclerosis and wintertime blues, and you have one absentee Atlanta metroblogger.

But now I’ve returned, and I promise I’ll be good — no egregious cross-posting of verbatim posts from my other blogs and I’ll take care with the gruesome details of my opera performances… and the crimes I cover. Look for a new entry about the Corbin Case coming soon, and more coverage of this most local of high-profile tragedies in the upcoming months as it goes to trial in Gwinnett county.

But I can guaran-damn-tee you this, yo — my fingers will, as Gawd is mah witness, never type another “Runaway Bride” weblog entry again. Cross my heart, take it to the bank. Why can’t what happened in Duluth stay in Duluth?

Don’t answer that.