Writer, novelist, statesman, bass trombonist, chubbin wrangler, former telephone operator, past hedgehog owner and nine year undergraduate slacker Robert Rummel-Hudson was, in his youth, the champion Rock 'em Sock 'em Robots player in his neighborhood back in his desert hometown of Odessa, Texas (aka "Slow-deatha", "Odessalation, or "Jimbobwe"). He gave up the opportunity to go pro with his skill, however, instead spending the late 80s and much of the 90s in the Dallas area as a college student, occasionally-professional trombonist and borderline alcoholic.

In 1997, Rob's exile from Texas began. He fled first to Kalamazoo, Michigan, where he worked in a music store for an astoundingly small amount of money, drove his Honda CR-X wildly and stupidly through indescribable amounts of snow, got married and made a long, silly name and a baby. Rob then moved to Detroit, where he managed a music store, dodged gunfire, cursed his surroundings every day, and watched his baby erupt messily into an eagerly waiting world. It was at this point that he did something that is widely considered to be his wisest move ever. He left Michigan.

Robert Rummel-Hudson spent the next four years in New Haven, Connecticut, where he moved to take a job, first as a Macintosh Support Guy at a university-affiliated mental hospital, and later as a computer support tech for the Gods of Medicine at the med school. He lived in a 150 year-old house in downtown New Haven with his wife Julie and their daughter Schuyler ("the Chubbin"), where they often sat by the front window and watched the parade of human oddities go by.

After two cool years in Austin, Rob and his family recently moved to the suburban circle of Hell known here on Earth as Plano, Texas so that his daughter could attend a special class for cyborgs. For a time, he once again managed a music store, fulfilling his weird little High Fidelity fantasy lifestyle. After realizing that the store in which he worked was a dead end (a realization that apparently was shared by the national head office since it subsequently closed), he took a position with a local university's School of Architecture as the Dean's Minister of Propaganda.

In February of 2006, Rob was diagnosed with Type II Diabetes. This pissed him off to no end.

Rob is the author of the following: a book about his daughter called SCHUYLER’S MONSTER (to be published by St. Martin's Press in 2008), several half-completed novels, the most recently being a serious gloomy ghost story, World War One sort of a thing; some stuff that he doesn't really want to talk about that got him in a great deal of trouble but nevertheless still cracks him up a little; an early and embarrassing collection of journal-like essays called Robservations (a title that perhaps might have benefited from another five or ten minutes worth of thought); an early journal effort called the Pages of Goo that got him into trouble almost from the first entry; a chronicle of his time in Kalamazoo called, originally enough, Kalamazoo Days; and of course The Book of Rob, unique in his output in that someone actually read it.  Darn Tootin’ was the last incarnation of his online journal before he was devoured by the blogging craze that’s sweeping the nation, baby.  The result, Fighting Monsters with Rubber Swords, can still be read and (perhaps) enjoyed today.

Like every other man, woman and child in America, Rob loves bacon. He can be reached at rob@darn-tootin.com.