Greetings, friends!

I hope the New Year is going incredibly well for you. This is a time for big things, where we begin to overhaul our lives. We all have events to set in motion, goals to achieve, and promises to keep. So, give yourselves a hand if you haven’t broken a resolution yet!

And if you’re one of the rest of us, keep in mind that the year isn’t a failure because of a cookie in January. At any rate, January has been a beast, and this is what I’ve been up to:

• Unpacked the last box, so we have finally moved to our lair in Seattle! Forget about the rent payments, it’s never official until the last box is in the recycling bin. The final item unpacked was my grill, which was immediately called to service to make burgers for the housewarming.

• I started work on a new short story, a little smaller in scope than Daddy’s Little Girl, which has morphed into its own thing. I should have something to show by the end of February.

• I’ve entered the Goodreads Reading Challenge for the fourth year in a row, and I’ve committed to reading 12 books. Hopefully, I can get through them all this year. I’ll have the review for number one, Daniel H. Wilson’s 2011 best-seller Robopocalypse, later this week.

• Still trucking through revisions on 4play. It’s been slow going thanks to the move—and let’s be honest, it’s my least favorite part of the process—but this is supposed to be a marathon, not a sprint. That said, I need to run (write?) like I’m being chased by zombie bears.

• Pitchers and catchers report to Spring Training in 14 days. No follow-up there, this is just a public service announcement.

• I’ve been working hard in the gym, and I’m down about four pounds. Not bad, but not great. I’ve got some work to do.

• I got some new ink a couple of weeks ago, thanks to the incredible talents of Susan Lindsey at Ink Drop Tattoo Shop in Bellingham, WA. I won’t lie, it was a painful three hours, but I sucked it up and got through it (read: I whined a lot, stopped twice for breaks, and wondered out loud what kind of crazy I was smoking), and the result is quite badass.

I generally tend to shy away from personal stuff on my blog. I usually went with the idea that this is about my writing, not me. I’ve come around to a change of heart in that mindset, as my writing does not exist in a vacuum. It may be a part of who I am—a big part—but there is more to me than that. This year, I’m going to invite you to some of the other parts of my life, like exploring my new city for the first time, or my adventures in cooking or weight loss or whatever. I hope you enjoy coming along for the ride.

#2019 #January #progress #process #newprojects #NewYorkYankees #tattoos