Revised Jan. 1, 2025 from home in North Carolina
If you’re joining my life in media res, here’s the backstory:
2020-21: Covid lockdown
2022: My cancer diagnosis & Dad’s death—all on the same day!
2023: Rehab post-cancer treatment…
2024: Hurricane Helene slams North Carolina. Jack Frost novel finally pubbed!
2025:
Starting the New Year with a Dry January, which is typical for us. Current goal is to wrap two books at least this year. One is written, and I’m editing it right now.
2024:
Rereading Pressfield, I analyzed all my open creative projects and realized that if I hustled, I could finish four writing projects in 2024. I was only able to complete two:
The first, Speaking My Sleuth, is done but will only be sold on our upcoming Shopify store. Strangely, this book may well be the most personal I’ve ever written, filled as it is with a ton of short essays about the writing life, my journey to writerdom, and my childhood obsession with the mystery genre.
The second is a short novel in the Sorceress Kringle universe. For nearly a decade, “TIMoNY” has been my shorthand for a book called The Icemaster of New-York, which is now officially published. I’m really proud of it, and think it turned out quite well.
I wrote six short stories, about one a month, since July. Nothing’s sold yet, though I did sell a reprint of an older story to Black Cat Weekly. They just bought it out of the blue. I love it when that happens.
My most recent ghostwriting project is finally pubbed, and is doing very well. Can’t say much more about it.
Have done a small amount of travel, mostly short weekend trips for weddings and book events. Not worth getting into.
The Hurricane:
In the last week of September, our home, neighborhood and city were hit by Tropical Storm Helene, which devastated parts of our mountain region in Asheville, NC. Numerous trees fell on our property, causing expensive freaking damage. Without water, electricity, internet, or communications, we toughed it out with our dog at home. We have gone a month and half without sleep or work, in order to supervise the renovations to our property. I hope never to go through this again. We were very lucky but I’m amazed how fast the costs added up.
2023 was a blur:
I wrapped a nonfiction ghostwriting project for a client. That book pubbed August 2024.
I accompanied Denise on two trips to research the book she’s writing.
I went with her on her fall 2023 book tour for her Young Readers Book. Happy to report that book event attendance appeared to be up over fall 2021.
I wrote tons of blog posts for this site, and guest posts for SleuthSayers.
Revised and updated this website incessantly.
Compiled a family cookbook; delivered to my editors—my brothers—Dec. 24th.
A ton of follow-up doctor visits and therapy appointments, which were tedious but necessary.
Throughout all of this, I was conscious of the fact that I was frittering away my precious time. Procrastinating. Not doing the work that was important to me, which is, of course, my writing. Why? See 2022 note above. Illness and mourning are my only excuses. Maybe shock, too.
Enough for now. Thanks to Derek Sivers for inspiring this Now page.