I sat down with a plan to write something profound about 2016, but so much has already happened in the past few days that I’m already feeling overwhelmed.

On the first, I moved to a new place with my wife and pets. It’s twice as big as the one we were living in before, so we have massive amounts of space to really stretch out and relax. No longer, will we fell cramped for space. Of course, we’re still in the process of moving, unpacking, painting, and designing the space for maximum relaxation, but it’s looking like we’ll be getting back to normal sooner rather than later.

On the second, I was published in a flash fiction compilation titled Camels and Cake: Tea for Three. It was an honor to be able to contribute to the collection of works and the money produced from sales will be donated to a charity!

While I’m working on getting everything back to normal, I’ve been working on some goals for the new year. I have to determine a direction for the projects I’m currently working on. Right now, I have three books in my queue: The Age of Eshol, An Unassuming Fall, and Infinity’s Heir.

The Age of Ehsol is going to be put on hold for the beginning of 2016. Though I’m not done with the third part, I’ve discovered that the first part is going to require a rewrite. I’m not happy about having to do it, but the more I look at it, the more I keep coming round to the same conclusion. At the moment, I’m not really feeling up to ripping that work apart, so I’ll be putting that endeavor on hold to focus on An Unassuming Fall.

An Unassuming Fall is a mystery novel that I currently have out with Beta readers. This work was produced in only a month during NaNoWriMo, but despite how quickly it was written, I still feel there is a good story there. I’ve only gotten a little bit of feedback from readers so far, but I haven’t been told that the book is terrible, so I’m guessing that I didn’t completely fail in crafting an interesting mystery. I hope to have some reviews back by the end of the month and at that time I’ll decide how to move forward. If everyone is happy with the work, I’ll probably try and query a few agents in February. Fingers crossed.

My current work in progress is titled Infinity’s Heir. The story is a mix between science fiction and fantasy, but will require me to do quite a bit of research on Norse Mythology to get some of the more stylistic elements of the story correct. I’ve run the idea past a few people and they are interested in it. I hope to dedicate enough time to the work to be able to finish it in the first quarter of the year. This will require a tight schedule, but I feel like it is possible. Assuming that goes off without a hitch, it should leave me with enough time to work on a sequel to An Unassuming Fall or even a separate science fiction novel I have in mind – Leaving Valhalla.

If nothing else, the theme for 2016 is going to be variety. I spent so long working on The Age of Eshol, that I got bogged down in that one story. While I’m still invested in it, sticking to a single manuscript for so long doesn’t really give you the opportunity to experiment. Usually, I stick with Science fiction stories and I definitely plan to write a few more this year (Infinity’s Heir, Leaving Valhalla, etc.), but I really enjoyed writing a mystery and really want to try my hand at a second. Hopefully, I’ll have enough time to try as many of these as I can. With any luck, I’ll even manage to get a few of them published!