Tag: New Year

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the year that was and the year that will be

Ah, New Year’s…that time of hope and good will and the best intentions. We say good riddance to the year that was and throw open our arms to embrace the year to come.

As a general rule, I do my goal setting and reminiscing about the year at Samhain, but it’s been a hell of a year.

I moved from Walnut Creek out to Stockton to be closer to my mom and brother. I went to Star Wars Celebration. I got a dog. I published three novels. I lost my father and stepped into the caretaker role for my stepmother. I got to go to Nashville to see Radio Company in their first public gig.

In April, I wrote a poem every single day. I finished writing one book and got a third of the way into the next.

I got to catch up with some family I haven’t seen in forever, and meet some family I had never met.

I generally suck at keeping up with any schedules or such when it comes to posting daily or weekly or whathaveyou…but I’d like to get back to a more regular posting schedule. When I started this blog, I committed to posting here every Mon-Weds-Fri, but life got in the way, so maybe I’ll attempt Saturdays and Wednesdays. One of those days I’ll post something about my writing process/progress and the other whatever comes to mind.

I’m also wanting to get back to writing more poetry, so you may see more of that too.

Here’s a wish for you, Readers: May 2023 bring you peace, joy, and love. May your coffee be strong, your food delicious, your sleep restful and your heart filled with kindness. Goodbye 2022, the year that was, and welcome 2023, the year that will be.

Photo by Moritz Knöringer on Unsplash

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ease on down

It’s been a hell of a year, hasn’t it?

On the one hand, it feels like 2021 flew by and I have no idea how we’re in the last week of the year. On the other hand, the events of January 2021 feel like they were two years ago, not one.

A lot changed for me this year.

I got laid off of a job I was enjoying, but which didn’t pay me well. I struggled financially to the point of needing to be bailed out by friends. I applied for, and received, rent relief from the California government (though it took forever). I started a new job on my birthday that I both love and that rewards me financially (and treats me like a grown up adult person). I finished writing two books and started querying with the first one in the series (still querying).

And here at the tail end of the year, I’ve made the decision to move closer to my family, now that I have a job that is permanently remote.

It seems somehow fitting to be at the end of the year and packing up my life. It gives me a chance to review all the steps that brought me here…to clear out what is no longer necessary and savor the things I love. Quite fitting for this time of year, I think.

I haven’t heard back yet on the house I want. The landlady made it clear when I applied that she’s “looking for the right tenant” so she is taking her time making the decision. I am still looking, but there were very few listings in the week leading up to Christmas, so I anticipate I should start seeing more listings next week.

In writing news this week, I wrote the epilogue for the third blood witch book, and it surprised me by leaving an opening for a fourth book…which I then wrote the first chapter for, so that’s a thing that is happening.

I have this whole week off from the day job, and I’m using it to both write and get myself packed up. It’s about time I got off the computer, cranked up some tunes, and got busy. Y’all take care, Readers, and ease on into 2022.

Photo by Eliza Diamond on Unsplash

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welcome to the future

Do you remember when 2021 seemed like the distant future, impossible to fathom as anything than other a dystopian post-apocalyptic world filled with robber barons and highwaymen?

And yet, here we are. Then again, 2020 was something of an apocalypse and the world is lilting ever more toward dystopia.

In the enduring words of the Buffy The Vampire Slayer musical episode “Where do we go from here”?

It seems to me that our choices are to continue to devolve until our society is fractured, we need heavy weaponry just to get enough food to eat and we go to war over petty differences or we find some duct tape and start patching this shit back together.

Of course, patches don’t hold forever, which might actually be part of how we got where we are. If we want to do more than hold on to the status quo, we’re going to need to build something new. What does that look like?

Well, I know what I would like to see. I want a society that takes care of its most vulnerable, where each person enters life on a level playing field, where no one dies because they can’t afford to see a doctor, where basic human rights are respected and honored, where everyone pays their fair share and the government curtails things that threaten our existence (pollution, greed, unfair business practices).

How do we get there? If I knew that, I’d run for office. Well, no, I wouldn’t because I’m an agoraphobic introvert. But, you know what I mean. I do know that we never will get there if we can’t come to a place where our political dialog is not bogged down by the fundamental issues we have right now, where one half of the country wants to destroy anyone who is different than them (whether that difference is gender, sexual orientation, race, financial status or anything else), and the other half wants to destroy the first half.

Until we realize that no one is more equal than another, until we tax corporations and billionaires, until we fund schools, until we realize that healthcare is not a privilege of the rich…until we start to actually care about the other people in this country, patches are all we’re going to get.

We’re living in the future, I just wish it was more Star Trek and less Mad Max. Happy 2021, Readers. Be kind recklessly. Give love unconditionally. Be the change.

Cover Photo by Artem Labunsky on Unsplash

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kill it with fire

I don’t know about you, but this entire year has been ten years long and filled with awfulness, from people proving that we’ve become a selfish, greedy nation that doesn’t care about the less fortunate to the government abdicating its duty to take care of its people to the actual pandemic that has killed nearly 350,000 of us, and I am ready to put it behind me.

That isn’t to say that some good stuff hasn’t happened this year. It has and with luck it will produce some good news for me to share soon. However, being a Pagan who does on occasion still pull out the big box o’ritual, and who really, really wants to make sure that the bad of 2020 stays IN 2020 and doesn’t follow us onward, I plan to kill it with fire before midnight on December 31st. How, you ask?

Well, I’ve put together two rituals for folks who might also like to kill it with fire or maybe bind it, stick it and stone it to death. I’ve written them in a way that almost anyone can participate and adapt it to their beliefs/practices.

While I tend to do my new year ritual at Samhain, this year calls for some special handling, I think. I’ve even saved some firewood for this. I’m gonna get the fire pit going and I’m going to see this thing through to the end.

Here’s to a better year to come, Readers. May it bring with it kindness, compassion and a little cleansing fire.

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new beginnings

While Samhain ends the Celtic year and the new one begins, it doesn’t always feel like anything particularly new is happening as November dawns, particularly here in a modern world, where life no longer revolves around the growing seasons. This year, however…this year feels different.

I’m not just talking about an election, which to be fair I am quite happy about. The year 2020 began with me wrapping up work on my next book, and starting the arduous process of finding an agent/publisher.

Writing the book is the easy part.

I suck at self promotion and suffer some serious imposter syndrome at times. But I took the chance and started querying agents. And here, I stress started. I created a list of agents/agencies. I wrote my synopsis. I wrote my blurb. I sent a query. One.

And then I chickened out.

Instead of continuing that work, I started working on the next book. Like I said, writing is the easy part. But Friday morning, while I was working and refreshing election results, that agency sent me an email requesting my manuscript and synopsis. On top of the election results, I really felt like this weekend was the dawn of the new year.

Do we have a lot of work to do (on both counts), yes, we do. We have had four years where progress has been torn down and our nation cut open to display it’s rotten innards, and heavens know that getting an agent to read your book is only the beginning of seeing that book come to be.

We’ve taken a step into a new us, but the work is still to come.

Cover Photo by Artem Sapegin on Unsplash

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new year, same old me…

I’m not big on New Years as a holiday, or a time for big changes.   As a Pagan I celebrate the turning of the wheel toward beginnings at Samhain (Halloween), so it seems a bit redundant to do so again on the first of January.

I do get something of a new beginning this year, as the job I’m working moved into a new office during the holidays…and I just upgraded my home theater system with a new TV and surround sound system.

I took a few days off after Christmas to go visit my father, step-mother and one of my dearest friends in Tucson, Arizona and it was a chance to take my camera out into the desert where the sky put on quite the show for us.  It had been raining and stormy through the night, but the sun came out and the clouds were just gorgeous.

Speaking of gorgeous, check out these beautiful birds!

I should get back to drinking my coffee before it goes cold.  However you view the new year, Readers, I wish you joy, kindness and success (by whatever definition you define success) in 2020.  May the Force be With You and Live Long and Prosper!

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welcome to the future

It’s an odd thing, really.  By which I mean time and our visions of the future.  We’ve arrived at the year 2019, which past us predicted would be in varying degrees of dystopian decay, with technology that we haven’t quite realized.

We may be well on our way to dystopian entropy, given our current political, social and economical situation, but our cars don’t fly yet, at least not at the common man level (I’ve seen the prototype, but it’s a far cry from being affordable or even legal)…which I suppose is good, considering the terror it could cause.

I’ve been feeling pretty ho-hum about things since Christmas.  My idea of New Year’s eve, was a Star Trek:Voyager marathon that ended around eleven.  I’ve never been a big resolution maker, because I realized young that most of us just make some big proclamation about big changes that we’re are never actually going to follow through on without any plan for how to accomplish them.

That said, however, I am resolving to work on two specific goals this year, and I already have plans in place for how to accomplish them.  I probably won’t really be discussing them, but they are health and finances.

Today is my first day back in the office, like many other Americans, I assume.  I like first days, they feel like a fresh start.  My goal for the next three days is to finish up a few unfinished projects from last year so that next week I can begin new things.  I also hope to get at least three hundred words written every day, whether on the current project or something else.  My daily writing has been slacking lately.

I guess I should get myself busy with that.  I have a mile long list of emails to respond to this morning, so I’m off to the day job.

Happy New Year, Readers!  Welcome to the future!