Christmas is practically here! I hope your season has been at least as merry and bright as mine, so far. I’m still rejoicing over the release of Dronefall Three, which is now available in paperback as well. Doesn’t look like I’ll be having a white Christmas this year, but I suppose you can win them all, now, can you?
I’ve had a great year here on Stardrift Nights. I’ve broken my record for amount of posts in a year since I started. And I did my first ever series Writing for Christ. I hope to become even more active here come 2020. Watch me break the record again!
I published three books this year. First my poetry collection Songs from the Small Hours, then Dronefall Two, Lightwaste, and finally Dronefall Three, Rainchill. I can see from my now slightly depressing post at the beginning of the year that I actually intended to finish the Dronefall series in 2019. Oops. But I’m actually glad I’m still working on it. And in January, I thought it was going to be a quintet. Ha! Now there are three more books on the horizon instead of two. And I’m happy about that.
I didn’t quite make my ambitious reading goals, either, but I did get some good reading done this year. I checked off some of those classics I’ve been wanting to get to for a long time: To Kill a Mockingbird, The Diary of Ann Frank, The Great Gatsby…. I also tried some popular YA in the form of the very hyped Hunger Games Trilogy. (Yeah, I actually hadn’t read it until this year.) That wasn’t too bad. I should do a post reviewing that trilogy in the future.
My favorite fiction of the year was definitely The Hound of the Baskervilles, by A. Conan Doyle. My favorite non-fiction…Creating Character Arcs by K. M. Weiland was great. I also really enjoyed Rocket Men by Craig Nelson which I read in honor of Apollo 11’s 50th anniversary this summer.
The thing to remember when looking back on your New Years goals and resolutions is that priorities change over time…sometimes over a very short time, but certainly over the course of a year. I’m actually pretty pleased with how 2019 turned out. And I’m very excited to see what 2020 has in store.
So, have a ridiculously merry Christmas. Stare at your tree while drinking some peppermint hot chocolate with whipped cream as well as marshmallows. Go ahead and get that present you know they’ll be crazy about, even if it’s a little over the top. This is Christmas we’re talking here. Put up all the lights you can get your hands on—if half of them still work, you can still use it. Blast Trans-Siberian Orchestra, or whatever your preference may be and have some fun, because God sent his Son to restore joy to the world. Pass it on.