How is it December already...?

Like millions of you out there, you're probably thinking to yourselves, "How is it December already?" Just four short weeks until the most epic fail of a year, 2020, is successfully in the PAST. If that won't be something to celebrate come New Year's Eve, I don't know what is. I mean, safely socially distanced celebrate, of course.

Sometimes I feel like I've been living in a Dadaist reality, where nothing makes sense. And perhaps it wasn't supposed to. Or, even more so, perhaps with time we'll be able to step back and make sense of it all. The proverbial can't see the forest for the trees. And there were SO MANY TREES this year, if you know what I mean...

That said, here we are. Some of you have been very productive while in quarantine, churning out art and books and new online businesses. Some of you have just barely held it all together. And that's okay. At the beginning of the pandemic I was like, "I'm going to write two novels, complete my cookbook, write a dozen short stories and more!" 7 months later I'm about half way through one book. And that's okay, I've realized. With so many distractions, so many points of stress and panic, with my anxiety disorder, I think I've done pretty damn well at being calm in the face of calamity. Which in my case is a major win.

So where does that leave my writing? Well, as I mentioned I'm half way through writing the first draft of a new paranormal YA-ish novel. And I love the way it is coming along. It's going to be a tough read for some people as it deals with issues such as mental illness, substance abuse, and emotional abuse at the hands of unstable parents, but I believe it is a powerful tale also of survival and resilience by the central teen character. I hope it is a message to other kids going through a rough home life, as I did back then, that you are a survivor and you are much stronger than you may realize...

I hope to have that book completed by mid 2021.

I've also been working on research for the fifth installment of the ETERNAL VIGILANCE series. This research has taken a bit of time due to the complex quantum physics nature of my new storyline. As fans of dystopian science fiction and horror know, you have to get your science absolutely correct, because someone somewhere will call you out. HA! And I've always prided myself on the believability of the technologies and theories in my books, even when they are completely fictional.

In order for someone to suspend disbelief, it must first be believable!

I mentioned at the beginning of the year a cookbook I was writing, as well. The vast majority of the recipes are complete and written. However, this project has been placed on a back burner until I have the ability to do the extensive time-consuming photography such a book requires. I've toyed with the idea of releasing it in batches in PDF form, ten recipes to a booklet. We shall see how that evolves. But first I must finish the YA novel!

Anyhoo... That's where I'm at with my creative projects. Cheers to all of you for making it through 2020! I applaud each and every one of you! I leave you with a theme song for 2020...

XOV''''VOX