Year End Wrap-Up

2019 was a good year for me.  I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t like surprises.  I had another successful year in Indonesia.  Took my niece to New York for her graduation present and went to Singapore for Christmas.  I’ve got to step my travel game back up, and hopefully I’ll be able to do that in 2020.  I will be starting a new job in August—more on that later.

The best thing that’s happened this year is that I’ve been writing original fic since February.  At the time, it had been an entire five years since the last Shortie.  I had a nasty bout of insomnia in early February and a whole bunch of memories came flooding back.  Sat down and penned a troika of stories under the name “The Astronomy Series,” and then shortly after finishing it, I began another fic called Switchblade Romance.  Switchblade Romance is NOT a Shortie; it is a full-blown novel. It’s pushing 100,000 words and I’m currently writing what I believe is the final chapter (of the first half of the story, but more on that later).  As always, I’d rather be writing, and I’m enjoying working on Switchblade Romance even if I did lose control of it somewhere around Chapter 5 or 6. 

*shrugs*  There are worse things that can happen.

One of the things I did this year that I’m proud of and want to do more of is a horror tribute during October.  I love horror in all its forms, but I’m debating whether I should do it once a year or more than once.  While October is the best time of year to pay tribute to the genre, there’s so much to cover that won’t all fit into one month per year.  I need to talk this over with Noob, who is also a diehard horror lover.

Another thing I'm trying to get in the habit of is reviewing movies.  Partly because I need to get back to blogging regularly, and partly because it's fun.  I have two in queue to review and hopefully I'll have them ready to go in a week or two.

Discoveries:  This year, Noob’s daughter hipped me to a YT channel called Chilling Tales for Dark Nights.  Voice actors read scary stories that range in length from five minutes to hours and hours.  I love it.  I listen to a story (or stories) almost every night and it never fails to soothe me and help me go to sleep.  Make of that what you will.

This year, I hope to publish another novel that I’ve been working on for several years.  I was supposed to do it in 2019, but time got away from me as it frequently does.  Noob is collaborating with me on the edits I need to make, and since we live on different continents, it’s hard to get together and collab like we used to do when I was stateside.  One of the things I need for this book is a brand-new cover, and I haven’t put the time into finding an artist.  I guess that’s the goal for 2020.

So anyway, that’s my 2019 in a nutshell.  Here’s hoping 2020 is equally as good.