Year in Review -- Sort of

I've been letting this blog sit idle over the holidays, while I've been enjoying time with my wife and friends, and a few days off of work.  I'm almost reluctant to break that, but I have a tradition of doing a year in review, and I'm reluctant to break that as well.  So, instead of not doing it entirely, I'm just going to do a lazy and sloppy job of it, and that way I can have it both ways.

The most relevant news for this blog is that I've begun blogging regularly again.  At least twice a week, which is not exactly phenomenal, and I've kind of slacked off during the holidays, but it's better than I've been doing.  In honor of the new blogging, I redesigned the blog.  On the other hand, maybe it was the other way around.

Kristin and I went to a lot of conventions this year: Boskone, Readercon, WorldCon, and World Fantasy.  We also went to visit her brother and his family, her parents and sister, and my family.  All this traveling used up most of my vacation time, so I didn't have enough to travel for the holidays, so it's just been some relaxing  in Boston for us this holiday season.

Also a big story is that my short novel, A Phoenix in Darkness, was finally published at Black Gate.  I'm fond of that story, and I'm glad that John O'Neill wanted it for his magazine, as one of the first stories published in the new online format.  It is an older story, though, and I like to think that I'm a better writer now than when I first wrote it, so there are some places where I wish the prose was more polished and the plotting cleaner and the pace smoother.  But I'm sure that five years from now I'll look at the stories I'm writing now and wish I could revise them, and if I waited for stories to be perfect before they were published, I'd never publish anything.

In other news, I now have a book under contract, meaning that it will be published someday.  Unfortunately, I don't know the release date yet, and the publisher hasn't yet announced it, so I'm keeping details under wraps for now.

I've also begun blogging occasionally at Black Gate.  I'll be doing monthly reviews of self-published books, the first of which should be out soon.

So it's been a busy year for me, and I've had a lot of fun.  I'll be back in a couple of days with my New Year's Resolutions, such as they are.