All right. I'm up.

I heralded the new year by battling a cold, as did most of the Western hemisphere, I believe.

Well, hello there. You may remember me from such blog posts as “Wake Me Up In January” (which turned out to be oddly prophetic) and such novels as “Hey, Is Anyone Reading This”? Ha ha. We like to kid around here. But seriously, now that I am over the madness that is the holiday rush, I can genuinely say…hello old friends. It’s good to see you.

Me? Oh, I’m doing well enough. I finally finished Sins of the Flesh, the fourth book in the Sinners and Saints series. It’s just under 100k (if you don’t speak “publisher”, that means “hella long but not quite OMGWHY long”). And despite the fact that it took nearly 2 years to complete, I’m satisfied with it. The story didn’t want to tell itself—rather, it insisted on being yanked out in little chunks. Part of this—well, all of this—was my fault for not outlining.

Or aliens. It must have been aliens.

My New Year’s resolutions were fairly straightforward. As I mentioned in one of my last updates, 2014 was kind of hellish. There are the personal goals and the professional ones. Really, I’m not a huge fan of resolutions that are about self-improvement, because resolutions themselves are prone to be broken. I’ve done and failed the weight loss resolution, so I’m not going to kick myself if these don’t go exactly as planned. Instead of giving myself a weight goal to have achieved by 2016, I’m setting realistic goals. I already go to the gym 2-3 times a week; I plan on adding 15 minutes to my workout. Baby-steps toward improvement rather than diving headfirst into something I don’t know if I can attain. After all, this goal really isn’t to lose weight. It’s to be healthy. I find it easier if I don’t start from a place of negative thinking.

My loftiest goals are writing related, and the sort of goals I will enjoy pursuing. I’m in the middle of outlining a large contemporary project right now. I also have Book V of the Sinners and Saints series on my 2015 to-do list, and the revamping/rereleasing of Ripples Through Time, which will be no longer available from Siren Publishing come April. I don’t know if I’ll be able to meet all these goals, but I will have fun trying. And that’s not even taking into consideration the 18k-30k story I need to have complete in about a month-6 weeks, or the other contemporary novella/novel I have in the works.

I want to get back to doing what I love this year. What are your goals?