Elvis Presley in 1968

Have you ever noticed that the first post on a new blog is almost always boring? Let’s get the mundane one out of the way.

Welcome to The Mystery Train, an Elvis Presley blog. I’ve been toying with the idea of starting an Elvis blog for about two years now. In the meantime, I’ve been using sporadic posts on my mostly sci-fi blog as an outlet for writing about Elvis. In addition, I’ve guest blogged over at Elvis Today and ElvisBlog.

In fact, it was a recent post by Elvis Today’s Thomas that encouraged me to finally take the plunge and start an all Elvis blog of my own. Though I will no doubt decrease the number of posts about Elvis on my sci-fi blog, I will continue being available for guest stints on other Elvis blogs.

I actually started writing about Elvis nearly twenty years ago. From 1992 to 1997, I was the president of an official Elvis Presley fan club. I’m not sure how many there are now, but there were about 450 official clubs back then. Mine was only a “club” in the loosest sense of the term, though.

At its peak, my Elvis fan club had maybe fifty concurrent members. During all of those years, we never held a single meeting! In reality, the club existed solely as an excuse for me to create and write a quarterly newsletter about Elvis (kids, we had to use an archaic delivery system back then – consisting of items called “paper,” “envelopes,” and “postage stamps”).

I was 16 when I started that club, certainly one of the younger fan club presidents at that particular time. It was not exactly popular for 16-year-olds to like Elvis back then. While I may have been young, I had grown up listening to Elvis and had a lot to say about him.

These days, I am rapidly (and I do mean rapidly) approaching 35. All those years have gone by, yet Elvis is still there providing the soundtrack to my life – and I still have a lot to say about him. That’s why I’m here.

As for you, hold on tight, this train’s leaving the station! Enjoy your ride.