Man, 2023 certainly was a year, in the sense that as far as I can tell time passed and I grew older. Every December I have the same experience: I am amazed and slightly alarmed to realize that so much time has slipped past. For the most part, I don’t pay much attention to time. I measure my days in terms of finished stories, completed freelance assignments, and the volume of liquor bottles in my recycling, not hours or days. Looking back, 2023 was a pretty good year. I
- Sold two short stories
- Published two short stories (I Am the Grass and The Little Birds)
- Released two Avery Cates novellas and the latest Cates novel
- Wrote approximately 5,000 freelance articles, which paid for the
- approximately 5,000 bottles of whiskey I drank
- Produced 12 podcast episodes
- Published a slightly tarnished novel here on the wee blog
- Judged some writing contests
- Reviewed a bunch of books
- Did a bunch of house projects that somehow didn’t end with the house on fire or me trapped under something heavy
- Published 52 issues of Writing Without Rules: Deep Dives (52!)
- Launched Writing Without Rules: From the Notebook and convinced some of y’all to pay me money for it (thank you)
- Released not one but two albums of music from The Levon Sobieski Domination that no one asked for or appreciated
- Continued to champion the footnote as both a literary device and a joke machine
- Fed and clothed myself for 365 days straight. If you knew me you’d be impressed
I mean, put into bulleted list form that seems impressive. And honestly, any year that ends with the bills paid, the glass full, and the cats purring is a good year, so unless I am jinxing myself and next seven days are gonna be rough, I think we can put 2023 into the books as a perfectly cromulent year. I hope it was for you, too.
So, onto 2024. A couple of bits of business:
- The Serial Novel. So I guess posting a novel here a chapter at a time is a thing, now, so if you enjoyed reading Collections (and Designated Survivor and Detained before that), know that the 2024 serialized novel will be Black House. I’ve done a podcast about this one, and released a text adventure based on it, so it’s not exactly an unknown quantity. But if you’ve been curious about it, you can read the whole thing next year one chapter a week. Here’s the not final, totally-might-change cover I’m playing with:
- The No Pants Cocktail Hour Goes Nonfiction. I’ve been producing my self-centered podcast for more than 5 years , which is a lot of short stories and book chapters to read and discuss. In 2024 we’re going to experiment a little and cover 12 essays I’ve published over the course of my career. Some of these were promotional in nature, some were just gigs I got paid for, but I thought this would be an interesting vein to mine for a while. Maybe in 2025 we’ll do freelance work, or go back to fiction. Who knows! Here’s what we do know: I will be making a tipsy ass of myself at least 12 more times in 2024, and you should come along for the ride.
Otherwise, nothing much will change, I don’t think. Hilarious social media posts on various platforms? Check. Jokes about pantslessness in each and every post, article, and patent application I write? Yup. The endless struggle for attention that occasionally inspires drenching existential dread? Sure, why not.
Happy New Year, y’all!