After publishing Call of the Minotaur, I found myself in a strange place.
For the first time in a long time, I had a little creative breathing room. Not total freedom, exactly. There are still covers to refine, print editions to manage, book pages to update, marketing ideas to test, and the next Midas Files story already lurking somewhere in the fog.
But the big creative mountain — finishing Call of the Minotaur — had finally been climbed.
And once I had a little time on my hands, I did what any normal person would do.
I looked around my house, saw a bunch of real chores that needed attention, and immediately decided to clean up my website instead.
This is what writers call productivity.
It is also what homeowners call avoidance.
Still, Scratch Writing needed it.
For years, the site had become a little bit of everything: author updates, old business-services pages, publishing thoughts, movie reviews, local Pittsburgh articles, experimental blogs, strange humor pieces, and the occasional post that made perfect sense to me at the time and now feels like it was written by a committee of raccoons with a marketing degree.
There was good stuff in there. There was history in there. There were ideas worth keeping.
But there was also bloat.
And after finishing Call of the Minotaur, I realized Scratch Writing no longer needed to be everything I had ever tried to make it. It needed to become what it actually is now.
The creative home for my books, my articles, and the strange little universe around The Midas Files.
The End of the Business Brochure Era
The first thing that had to go was the old business-services identity.
Scratch Writing started as a business name, and for a long time it carried that weight. It had pages about writing services, content strategy, business communication, web copy, and all the things a freelance writer or consultant is supposed to say online to sound like a serious adult.
There was nothing wrong with that version of the site. It made sense at the time.
But it no longer fits.
My professional life can live on LinkedIn. My career updates, technical writing work, SharePoint adventures, documentation projects, and workplace thoughts do not need to compete for space with ancient alien conspiracies, Pittsburgh-rooted thrillers, fake news about interstellar SUVs, and Daniel Craig-inspired alien henchmen.
That was the clarity move.
Scratch Writing is no longer trying to be a business-services site.
It is an author platform.
That means the books come first. The articles support the books. The magazine reflects the imagination behind the books. The whole site should make more sense to a reader who arrives here because they found The Midas Protocol or Call of the Minotaur and wants to know what kind of person wrote them.
Hopefully the answer is: a fairly normal Pittsburgh-area guy with a history degree, a taste for conspiracy thrillers, a weakness for old movies, and a suspicious number of thoughts about time travel.
Scratch Magazine Gets a Real Shape
The biggest change is Scratch Magazine.
For a while, Scratch Magazine was more like a storage unit than a magazine. It held everything: local articles, movie reviews, old satire, writing advice, business posts, science pieces, author notes, and half-formed blog ideas.
Some of those ideas deserved better.
Some deserved a nap.
So I started sorting.
The result is a cleaner Scratch Magazine experience built around a smaller group of channels that actually connect to my books, my interests, and the kind of readers I hope will enjoy The Midas Files.
The Scratching Post
The Scratching Post is the personal side of Scratch Writing.
This is where I can write about author life, creative updates, story ideas, Pittsburgh as inspiration, house projects I am avoiding, and whatever else helps readers get to know the person behind the books.
Not every post here will be about The Midas Files, but the channel exists to create that author-reader connection. It is the place for the human stuff.
Basically, if Bingham’s Notebook is the secret file cabinet, The Scratching Post is me standing beside it with a cup of coffee, explaining why I probably should have organized it sooner.
Bingham’s Notebook
Bingham’s Notebook is the deeper dive into The Midas Files.
This is where I can explore characters, mythology, timelines, hidden history, story development, alternate ideas, and the strange architecture behind the books. Some older posts will remain as legacy articles, showing how the story evolved while I was developing Call of the Minotaur. Others will be more current reflections now that the book is published.
That distinction matters.
Not every old Bingham’s Notebook article should be treated as final canon. Some of them are more like creative excavation: a record of what I was thinking at the time. But I like that. Readers who enjoy a series often enjoy seeing how the mythology took shape.
So those posts are being cleaned up, preserved, and placed in better context.
Cool Filmz
Cool Filmz is staying because movies and television have always been part of my storytelling brain.
But I am tightening the focus.
This is not just a place for random reviews. Cool Filmz is where I can write about movies, shows, genre, character, structure, mythology, old favorites, guilty pleasures, and the stories that shaped how I think about fiction.
A piece about Terminator 2 fits. So does Die Hard, Star Wars, The Da Vinci Code, Conspiracy Theory, or a good thriller that feels like it shares DNA with The Midas Files.
The point is not to become a film critic.
The point is to talk about story.
Quantum Soup
Quantum Soup is the new name for the strange science and future-facing ideas channel.
This is where articles about space, technology, cybersecurity, AI, quantum theory, fragile systems, and weird scientific frontiers can live. It replaces the older, less-focused science/technology lane and gives the whole thing a better personality.
The name fits because the best ideas in this area are messy in the right way.
Space capsules returning without crews. Global software outages. CubeSats exploring the cosmos. Splashdowns, cybersecurity failures, artificial intelligence, strange physics, hidden technologies — all of that feels like fuel for the kind of thrillers I like to write.
Quantum Soup is not a science journal.
It is a place for ideas that make reality feel a little less settled.
The Funny Newz
The Funny Newz may be the weirdest survivor of the cleanup, and honestly, I kind of love that.
This is the humor section of Scratch Magazine: fake headlines, sci-fi satire, UFO nonsense, cryptid chaos, ancient-alien absurdity, bad technology, shady organizations, and ridiculous dispatches from a world that probably should not be trusted with advanced tools.
It is not directly about The Midas Files, but it absolutely comes from the same strange neighborhood of my imagination.
If Bingham’s Notebook is the lore room and Quantum Soup is the idea lab, The Funny Newz is the guy outside yelling that aliens are buying beachfront property and the Moon is being turned into a billboard.
Every magazine needs that guy.
What Got Parked
A big part of the cleanup was deciding what not to keep active.
Across Pittsburgh, Across Ross, and The Football Fan’s Diet are all ideas I still like, but they do not need to be active Scratch Magazine channels right now.
They may return someday as separate “Sites from Scratch.” Across Pittsburgh especially still has value, including a Facebook audience that may be useful when I write something Pittsburgh-centered. But I do not want to be committed to feeding a weekly Pittsburgh content machine while also trying to write books.
That is how bloat happens.
So Pittsburgh will still appear when it belongs — especially in The Scratching Post, where it connects to my life, my fiction, and my identity as a Pittsburgh-area author. But it does not need to be its own lane inside Scratch Magazine right now.
The same goes for The Football Fan’s Diet. It may be a fun standalone project someday. For now, it can sit on the bench, hydrate, and wait for its number to be called.
Archiving Without Erasing
Another important part of this process has been deciding what to archive.
I do not want to delete everything old just because the site has a cleaner purpose now. Some older articles are part of the history of Scratch Writing. Some show what I was thinking while developing the books. Some are funny enough, strange enough, or useful enough to preserve.
But they need context.
That means some posts will be cleaned up. Some will be renamed. Some will be moved into better categories. Some will get archive notes explaining that they reflect earlier thinking. Some may quietly disappear into the digital attic, where they can think about what they did.
This is not about pretending the site was always perfectly focused.
It was not.
It is about making the site useful and enjoyable now.
The New Scratch Writing Experience
The end result is a cleaner, more honest Scratch Writing.
Scratch Writing is the author home.
Scratch Writing Press is the publishing imprint.
Scratch Magazine is the article side of the author platform.
The Midas Files is the center of gravity.
That feels right.
It also feels sustainable. I can write a personal piece for The Scratching Post, a lore article for Bingham’s Notebook, a movie essay for Cool Filmz, a strange science piece for Quantum Soup, or a fake news report about alien real estate developers for The Funny Newz — and all of it still feels like it belongs under the same roof.
That was the missing piece.
The site no longer has to explain every random thing I have ever been interested in. It only has to reflect the world around my imagination.
That is a much better job for it.
Now About My Actual House
Of course, the danger of cleaning up a website is that it can feel like you cleaned your actual life.
You have not.
The dishes are still there. The laundry still exists. The garage has not organized itself. The house projects remain undefeated. Somewhere, a paint can is waiting for me with the quiet patience of an unpaid debt collector.
But at least Scratch Writing is in better shape.
The business clutter is gone. The magazine has clearer channels. The books are easier to find. The old articles are being cleaned up and sorted. The whole thing finally feels less like a junk drawer and more like an author platform.
So maybe now that the website has pants on, I can put some on too and go clean my actual house.
Maybe.
After one more article.
