And just like that, 2024 is over.

It was a rough year for me, personally (I got a little reminder of that this morning), but there were a lot of good things about it, too. It’s rare, I think, to have a year that’s all bad or all good, and a lot of how we think about it just comes down to how we decide to look back it and remember things.

There were a lot of plusses for me this year. Creatively. Socially. Hobby-ly? I’m going to try to focus on those.

So speaking of creatively… what did I get done this year?

Well, 2024 started with a massive rewrite of God’s Junk Drawer. David, my agent, read it at the end of 2023 and made a lot of really solid points. I cut almost 20k words, reorganized a bunch of it, then turned around and added 22K of new material. It’s going to be my biggest book ever. Well, ever published. We don’t need to talk about… the other one.

I finished a first draft of TOS which I’d had to set down (around 40K words) for the above rewrites. Then I did a second draft of it. And I’m maybe halfway into a third draft. It’s really good. I’m enjoying it a lot. I think you will, too. I’m hoping to show it to a few folks in a week or three.

I wrote a story for Weird Tales which was an all time, never-gonna-happen bucket list thing for me. Issue #370 with “Straw Man” is available now. If you’re more of an audiophile, you can get it that way, too, and hear my story read by the ever-wonderful Ray Porter.

I also wrote a new Carter & Kraft story for Combat Monsters, which is out in February. I’ve wanted to tell this one– “The Night Crew” –for a while and Henry Herz gave me the perfect chance to do it, and it fits in quite nicely between two of their previously published adventures. We’re doing a little signing tour for it, too.

And there were thirty-four assorted ranty writing blog posts (counting this one) and a dozen newsletters.

That may not look like much to some of you. I know there are some writers who are much more prolific than me. And other folks might be thinking “holy crap, that’s what he thinks is not much?!?”

But y’see Timmy—it doesn’t matter. I’m not telling you this to make you feel better or worse. You shouldn’t be judging yourself off me either way. Nobody is a better/ worse writer just because they managed to put down more or less words than someone else. What matters is that you keep doing it. Keep writing.

So I hope that’s what you plan to do in the coming year. Tell your stories your way. Let your voice be heard. Don’t stop.

Next time… it’s a new year. Who knows what we’ll do. What do you want to see here?

Until then… go write.