It’s 2019. I’m sure most of you are aware of this by now, and those who aren’t… well I tip my cap. Your New Year’s Eve celebration must have been epic.

I’m not a New Years resolution sort of guy. Haven’t been for a long time. I don’t really know why I stopped the practice, although common sense tells me that at some point I began to move away from sure-fire failures, especially those that are avoidable. Unmade resolutions cannot be broken. It’s math, I think, so you can’t dispute it.

But I’m very much into celebrating the newness that comes with the month of January. Aside from the nuisance of having to change all my errant handwritten 2018’s into 2019’s there isn’t much about the beginning of the new year that I don’t like. I’m already relishing several things just dripping with shiny newness.

For example, there’s this guy.

Please meet Miles Davis Varengo who joined our family just in time to ring in the New Year with us. (He was sound asleep when the ball dropped, cuz little.)

When we lost Tanner in April I was pretty sure I was done with pets, but as time went by I got thinking. It seemed that as bad as it feels to say goodbye to a family member at the end of his life, the decade or so of joy I’d be denying myself might not be something I want to miss. Then I saw this guy’s face on the internet. (My daughter and wife had been sending puppy pictures for a few months, which may also have had a part in softening my stance on the issue.)

As it turns out, young Miles is an amazing puppy. Very well behaved, a good leash-walker, friendly to everyone he meets, and overflowing with love.

Then there is The Terror of Tijuana, the third book in the Cleanup Crew series, which is progressing very nicely. I’m about at the half-way point with it. So there’s a second new thing to look forward to.

Do I dare drop a third on you?

When I began writing the CUC thrillers, the next book in the Cerah of Quadar fantasy series was at somewhere around 125 thousand words and was feeling very far from completion. But then my publisher and I reconfigured the format of the books, and by dividing the first two into three, we put in place a formula for slightly shorter page counts. This meant that the abandoned manuscript actually contained a complete first draft of what will now be book four in the series, with book five already started. So in the downtime between continuing work on Tijuana and training a new puppy I’ve been sneaking in some time to work on the rewrites for that project.

Which means it’s not unreasonable to expect another publication before we get too deep into the year.

So I’m resolved to continue my tradition of no resolutions, but am still stoked to see what 2019 has in store for us all.