Once More Around the Bend

See you in 2024!

I know this is incredibly cliche, but I have no idea where this year went.

An already busy year in the day job ratcheted up to something near ridiculous levels over the past two months.

I was in meetings and frantically tying up loose ends until the last minute before I had to leave for my son’s Christmas play at school yesterday afternoon.

But now work is wrapped up and I am off the clock until January 2nd. For a lot of that time I’m going to be on a cruise with my family and completely disconnected from work, something I’m looking forward to.

We are leaving out of Port Canaveral, and I managed to see a used SpaceX Falcon 9 booster in the Port. That’s it, all sooty from its trip back down to Earth, hiding behind that crane on the left.

I hope to get some time to write on the trip while the kids are entertained. I’m behind my goal for the month as I spent a lot of evenings this month doing day job work instead of writing.

My plan right now is to go through a final draft of a novella I’ve been working on this year. I got some great feedback from a couple of my AlphaMercs buddies on this one. I need to do some general tweaks here and there, eliminate one whole scene, completely rewrite another, and add at least one and maybe two new scenes. Then it’ll be back to the AlphaMercs for another look.

Then I’ve got a story idea for another Three Ravens anthology called Contested Landing. This would be another in the same universe as my story Laugh or Cry published by JR Handley in the Clash of Steel Anthology and one of the stories already under consideration by Three Ravens.

After that I’ve got a novel idea I’ve been fleshing out in that same universe, but in an earlier time period. I’m gonna start dropping snippets of that one in the next couple of months, so stay tuned!

I do have three short stories submitted to publishers right now (two of them at Three Ravens and one to Raconteur). I hope to get good news on those in the next few months.

I’m planning on putting out a “Year in Review” post after I get back from vacation, so look out for that in early January.

Until then, I hope you all have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!