"It was the best of times..."

It really was.

2023 was a trying year for many of us, myself included. I got more worries than Dolly Parton's got wigs. Health, finances, and other issues plagued my 2023.

But rather than pick apart the ways in which this year has screwed me and didn't even buy me dinner, I'm going to look at the silver linings and admire the ways it kept me going.

I got another honorable mention in the writing anthology contest I submit to every year, and it was the third honorable mention in a row. I had successful poetry challenges, first in February with the annual Post it Note Poetry Challenge, and then in April with National Poetry Month. I invented a new way to "see" my haiku poetry by writing linked haiku in 3 stanzas linked together by a common theme. They are my "3 Ways of Looking" poems and someday, if I end up writing enough of them, I'll collect them in a little ebook.

Speaking of e-books, I published my first one on Amazon for Kindle. Four & Twenty Blackbirds is a collection of twenty-four previously published short short stories and poems, plus one unpublished poem. It was a process, to be sure, and one that took me a couple of years to get right, involving learning some new formatting software. I am determined to make my books one-hundred percent done by me...the writing, of course, but also the cover designs and formatting and uploading to KDP, all done by myself. I did get some help with editing, but a writer should always get someone to go over their work before putting it out there.

It was hard, but I learned it, and I'm ready to do some more books.

2023 also showed me that friends and patrons are out there, the universe sending them into my life to help me when I needed it most, not just financially...I'm especially thankful for the new friends who gave me encouragement to keep going. That is priceless to me, more precious to me than gold. You all know who you are and I love you.

Here's what my 2024 looks like:

• Books to Finish and (maybe...here come the maybes) publish (I WILL get at least one more in 2024, possibly two, and a third if I can. It looks to be a stressful year for life events.
• Swamplily Zen 
• Scheduled release date: March 1st, 2024. I am scheduling a release date in KDP for this one and have begun the process of arranging poems and placing them in Scrivener. This e-book will contain all my short haiku, senryu, tanka and other shortform poetry on Florida nature and Florida living.

• World Wide Web: Short Stories & Poems
• Another, larger collection of previously published stories and poems, and also some unpublished ones. A mix of other published stories and poems (only a few that were in my first collection, but mostly stuff from my later writing career). New stories/poems include:
• The Collective Memories of Reptilekind (poem)
• Dear John, from the Future Without You (story)
• poem in the shape of a starship (poem)
• Muddy the Waters (flash)
• Crunch Time (story)
• And more...!

• A collection of my Japanese forms and other shortform poetry called little paper parasols.

• I am working on getting a couple of these books out in 2024.
• I will continually work on my short stories, and novels:
• The Strange Blue Days of Dr. Fountainbrew (novel, fantasy, publishing under M.X. Kelly).
• Dare Mo Shinjinai (this now feels like a novela, I may try sending it to some magazines. Science fiction, X-Files love letter, romance, time travel, alt dimensions, this one's got it all, folks...).
• birds trees water sky (novella, alternate world fantasy, supernatural. Publishing as Joz Varlo).
• This one has a character of one of my Queer Sci-Fi anthology stories, Muddy Clare, from Muddy the Waters, but the MC is a little girl named Virgie Amory, a magical girl from a magical family in Alternate Appalachia.
• The Breaking of the Universe and the Teacup-Mending Ritual (short story, fantasy)
• I have another novel in research stage and I research it whenever I have a spare minute or two to watch a YouTube video, mostly of some of the worse Bigfoot hoaxers of all time, but ocassionally some gems. This will be a science fiction, fantasy, suspense, I dunno what-all kinda novel about Sasquatch and what our government may or may not know about them and the things they do to keep them secret. This book is titled So Lonesome I Could Cry, and I will be publishing under the pen name Joz Varlo.
• Participate as much as I can in the poetry challenges, though I may not be up to my usual quantity.
• Work on updating Joz Varlo's website, since i was finally able to get a domain connected to it. It will be my go-to author blog in the near future.
• My other goals of 2024 include just trying to get through it. It pains me somewhat (but not a lot, not gonna lie) that I may end up leaving Florida. It's becoming too much like California (nothing wrong with Cali, mind you, but it's all too rich for my blood, and now, so is Florida). My means of surviving are simple:
• Meditate for Inner Peace and Manifestion and help my fellow humans as much as I can as we all go about surviving together in these tough times. This too shall pass.
• Meditation for living a healthier life. Right now, I'm not so healthy.
• Meditate on becoming humble enough and brave enough to ask for help when I need it. Shameless plug for my tee-shirt shop. I need the dough.
• Meditate on gratitude for the good things I have seen in other people.
• Meditate on becoming a better person than I was yesterday. Defeat my yesterday's self!