I don’t make New Year’s resolutions. If something is worth saying “I resolve to do this thing!”, then it’s worth doing on whatever day of the year it occurs to you. Declare “I will save money by purchasing fewer Disco Diva costume mods in The Sims” on April 25 and I won’t judge. State “I shall reduce my carbon footprint by recycling my grocery bags into hackey sacks” on September 16 and I’ll cheer you on, dude.

But there’s power in the borders of things, to quote one of Sharyn McCrumb’s characters. The start of a year is an exhilarating time to think about what’s next. It’s a lofty precipice to stand on and contemplate the landscape before making a leap. Plus, if you come out and say that you’ll do something, that makes it happen, like speaking a demon’s name to call it forth.

In that spirit: I’m going to write more this year. I’ve fallen out of my daily habit of writing and I miss it. And I’ll start with something I slacked on last year: blogging. I only posted here 4 times in 2024. Surely I can manage 12 blog posts in 2025. Eleven and a half, really, since I’ve halfway written this one already!

I was quiet here in 2024 partly because I didn’t have much writing news to share. That’s because I spent less time writing and more time querying my novel (which was quite the learning experience but will be its own post).

While writing less, I read more: 23 books (including Stephen King’s The Stand, complete and unabridged, which at 1,149 pages should count as at least two books by itself). That’s a lot of books for a slow reader like me, especially compared with the five books I read in 2023. (Yes, like a true nerd, I track my reads, in a Google doc called “Books Read.” Mostly I do that because, whenever anybody asks me “So, what good books have you read lately?”, my mind goes infuriatingly blank, so I need that doc for reference!)

I did manage to write 11 new short stories last year, and the final quarter of 2024 brought a flurry of happenings:

• My horror story “The Last Train” came out in Brigid’s Gate Press’s The Horror That Represents You anthology,
• Three of my microfiction stories entered the world as part of the 42 Stories anthology (and I was the Story of Excellence award winner for the Myth chapter),
• I signed a contract for “Andie,” a horror flash story, which will be published later this year by Burial Books,
• My story “The Painted Man” got accepted as a reprint by Kandisha, a woman-owned horror press that I’ve had my eye on for years, and
• I met for the first time with my Horror Writers Association chapter’s newly formed critique group, a terrific experience that I hope to repeat in 2025.

What are your non-resolutions, readers and writers?