2013

With the ending of each year I think it’s healthy to go back and look at what the year meant to you. You try to honor the good, learn from or get over the bad, and the rest you sort of see where it fits into the bigger picture of your life. Since most folks that stumble onto this little bloggy-boo couldn’t care less about how my year went I’ll try to keep it short just to highlight things that were important to me.

It’s funny how much you forget from a year. People, places, things, and events. It all starts to blur together. But here’s what stood out…

In 2013 I…

Finished work on two long in the works books, which meant that I essentially wrote two books in two months. One in January – Cemetery Earth. And One in February – THE LAST WAR, the last of my Meep Sheep books.

Turned 39. Notable because it’s far longer than I ever saw myself kicking around. Being a full fledged adult is just…weird. But then I act like I am a kid most of the time so big surprise I don’t feel my age.

Proposed to my longtime girlfriend.

Worked on the Flint Horror Convention and its smaller satellite events.

Got to see and spend time with a friend from Brazil who came for a visit. She was a foreign exchange student during my senior year and was staying with a friend’s family so she and I became friends.

I published my long gestating novel Cemetery Earth. It was a book I began working on in 2000 that was to be a short story collection about the end of the world and which used a young boy as its protagonist.  The book changed a lot, from how I was doing it to some of the elements I added and took away from it – a huge setpiece for the book was excised to streamline it, though it was an element that seemed fun at the time I thought of it. It has been fun to work on the books. Maybe the most fun for me was doing photos for the cover that, with the help of a longtime artist friend, really gave the book a solid introductory image for people.

I wrote a short story that I put together and published for the wedding party. The story was utterly ridiculous and dealt with the issues we had during our wedding day – Sasquatch invasion and ghost attacks – and featured everyone in the party. It’s ridiculous and doesn’t quite count as Book 9, but it was fun to do and to put together, using a photo my wife had taken as the cover.

In October I got married. Despite a couple silly hiccups things were wonderful. Having my mother, father, and sister there with us and her mother, and family really meant the world to us. I am sad that her father had passed away before we were married but we did our best to include the families, our friends, and the kids that came as much as we were able. It was silly, it was weird, it was fun, and it was us.

A week after the wedding I got to see GOBLIN, an Italian instrumental prog band that is best known for scoring many horror films. I went with friends, hung out with friends, and was thoroughly blown away by the evening.

October also brought the third Flint Horror Convention. My little baby is still chugging along and I am terribly proud of the people I have been lucky enough to work with on it. We brought in some really fun guests, some great vendors, and despite the usual bumps, bruises, and issues that popped up the day was a blast and we all left that evening exhausted but with smiles on our faces.

The end of the year was hard because of health issues with my family and it put a very dark shadow over the waning weeks of the year. My family has been through a lot in the last eleven years and things are letting up. Somehow, some way we are all still together and while I know that our time together is getting shorter I also know I am lucky to have had as much time with my family as I have.

I have been very, very lucky to have lead the life I have. I screw up a lot – I make poor choices, selfish decisions, and I squander opportunities. I have depression and anger issues. I push people away at the same time I need people close. I am a darn mess.

But I am lucky.

Because there are a lot of people who see past my alphabet of flaws and who stick with me and forgive me. I am pretty much a straight up idiot but am trying, trying to evolve.

There’s really no way to micromanage everything but I lived through some amazing things, and I am lucky to have had that opportunity and am lucky for everyone that went through it all with me.

2014 brings with it the last of my books, the last meep book, which is, as I mentioned titled THE LAST WAR. It seems a fitting name.

Have at you!

www.meepsheep.com