Tag: New Year

Happy New Year! or Bah, Humbug!

~ janispattersonmysteries ~ 2 Comments

by Janis Patterson

Somewhere it seems to have been written that the first post of a new year is supposed to be a joyous burst of ambition, resolve and anticipation about all the wonderful things the new year brings.


Humbug!


If you’re like me, the new year is startlingly if not exactly like the old year, but with the added stress of having to remember to change from 2024 to 2025 every time you have to write a date. The house is still messy, laundry has to be done, my daily word count has been ignored, meals have to be planned, cooked and cleaned up after… Plus, I’m tired. And fat. Between the gustatory excesses of Thanksgiving, assorted parties (including a family wedding), and the several days of Christmas gatherings and the pure physicality of extra cooking, shopping and gift wrapping – naturally all done with appropriate snacks and meals – I find myself wishing that the lovely clothes I received were all a size or two larger.


Of course, this too will pass. I will return to what I was before the holidays (and hopefully lose a little more!) and wear my new garments with pride, the house will get clean (okay, cleaner) and life will return to the occasionally bizarre standard we regard as normal.


After the final excesses of New Year’s Eve.


There was a time I went out on New Year’s Eve. Friends would have parties – I even gave a couple myself – or on rare occasions my escort of the minute and I would go clubbing, where at the stroke of midnight we would scream, kiss and hug anyone within reach, dodge a flood of balloons and sip champagne. Where did we get the energy?


This New Year’s Eve The Husband and I did what we usually do on New Year’s Eve – stay home in our jammies, eat a good meal (usually leftovers from December’s overwhelming bounty), sip either a good bottle of Veuve Clicquot (the best champagne ever!) or a mug or two of egg nog (usually virgin) and make a concentrated effort to stay awake until midnight, when we kiss and express our hopes for a better new year for us and for everyone. It doesn’t get better than that, folks. This year we actually stayed up after midnight – not because of any resolution or desire to see the New Year in or a result of our libations… You see, one of our local TV stations was running a Twilight Zone marathon…


Anyway, that is why this is a most untraditional post. I am not going to wax eloquent of the delights inherent in a fresh start, or how you really can keep a resolution to write X number of words every single day, or that you now are free to really work towards making the NYT list, or any such nonsense. That would be as ridiculous as telling you to buy a gym membership and actually keep your promise to go Every Single Day… (Does anyone ever really fulfill that resolution? Anywhere?)


Truth is, you can do any of that or any other kind of beginning any day of the year. Back in my youth there was a popular poster proclaiming Today Is The First Day Of The Rest Of Your Life. Kind of cheesy, but also very true. Every day is a new beginning.


Today is your new beginning. So will be tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. Enjoy each and every one of them, but use them wisely.


Happy New Year.

A New Year, A New Me?

~ janispattersonmysteries ~ 7 Comments


by Janis Patterson

Don’t worry – this isn’t going to be an evangelistic paean about how I’ve totally remade myself to claim a glorious and bounteous New Year and the rest of my life. That would be nice, though, but I’ve tried it before and it doesn’t work. For long, at least. I think my record is about two weeks.


No, I’m the same old curmudgeonly, opinionated, workaholic biddy I’ve always been. The only changes are that I am a year older and – for a blessed change – rested. From writing stuff, at least. I finished my 22 novel republishing blitz on 25 October. I was so tired (and cranky, I will admit) that The Husband insisted I take November and December off.
And that proved to be a good thing. I am indeed rested and the creative mind is starting to percolate again. I would like to say that my house is cleaner, but I don’t tell lies. Sadly, it probably never will be, as I totally lack the housekeeping gene… and I thought I’d never marry anyone who was as bad a housekeeper as I, but… A sterling man in every other way, but…


We spent the early part of December in Germany, redoing our favorite Christmas market tour, enjoying good German food and beer and a refreshingly enthusiastic attitude toward Christmas everywhere from the markets to the stores to the street decorations. And the people. Love the people.


It’s a good thing I had no other commitments, as since the third week of December I have been at war with Lufthansa airlines about their last-minute cancellation of the final leg of our inbound flight and the subsequent disappearance of our luggage. My bag was found – in the hands of a thief, no less – but The Husband’s is still among the missing. Not to go into details, Lufthansa has handled the thing very badly and withheld information we need if we are to go forward, information that none of the dozen or so of Lufthansa employees we talked to said we needed. Needless to say, it is going to get very ugly.


Back to writing. Aside from the Lufthansa unpleasantness it has been a lovely two months. Germany was – as always – beautiful and fun. My writing mind is unfolding and starting to bloom. I’ve contracted for two novellas – one a Regency romance for a ‘summer weddings’ anthology, the other a WWI mystery for an anthology centered on July 4th. The other novellas include the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, WWII and Viet Nam.


And that doesn’t address the two nearly-finished books of my own done for my own publishing company and a major new release that has to be stage-managed. I’m even considering releasing a compilation of my blog posts from years past. Plus, we’re off to Egypt again in a short time. This will be my 8th trip and this time I get to see Abu Simbel for the very first time! I’m so excited!


Sounds like I won’t be rested for very long.


A writer’s work is never done. But – it is a lot easier when you are rested both mentally and physically, even if that desirable state only lasts a short time. You have to let the well refill. A happy new year to all of you –

MY LAST POST FOR 2021

~ marilynm ~ 6 Comments

This past year has flown by. Christmas is over except for the memories. So what are your plans for the New Year?

Unlike some long-ago past New Year’s Eves, we won’t be doing anything special except for having tamales for dinner and toasting with hot cider. Our big celebration is on New Year’s Day. I always make my version of Seafood Gumbo and various members of my family turn up to eat crab legs and shrimp in a tasty broth served over rice. Afterwards we usually play a rollicking game of Estimation.

What about the rest of 2022?

First, I’m surprised I’m still here to see it.  My hope is to finish the book I’ve been working on.

I’m also having a .99 cent sale of a Kindle copy of Invisible Path, a Deputy Tempe Crabtree mystery, from January 17 to January 21.

Like many, I’m hoping times will get back to normal—or at least a near-normal. A few days ago I had lunch with two of my writing buddies, and we decided to do it once a month. It was great to be together again. We are also contemplating setting up a book signing event.

Though I am no longer on the Public Safety Writers Association’s board of directors, they’ve asked me to attend their next meeting in February, sort of a transition. Since it’s in Vegas, I’m going since I’ll also be able to visit my sister who lives there. And I’ve already signed up for the PSWA writing conference in July.

I have an in-person event scheduled for April—we’ll see if that actually happens.

Though no one ever really knows what will happen in the future, it’s always fun to plan.

What are your hopes and plans for 2022?

And to all of you, I’m wishing for a happy and most wonderful New Year.

Marilyn

New Year, New Chair by Paty Jager

~ patyjag ~ 4 Comments

I’m starting this year with a new desk chair and a new perspective of my writing.

The chair. My old chair would make by backside numb when I sat for any length of time in it. I tried one of those egg crate things and it didn’t seem to help either. Not that I sit for long periods of time. With two dogs who seem to think they need to go in and out of the house every twenty minutes, I get up and down plenty during the day. But by mid-afternoon, I couldn’t concentrate because of pain down there.

My new chair in the corner.

I went to a chain office products store and sat in every chair, no matter what the price. I wanted a chair that would be comfortable and I could sit back and type with out hunching over the keyboard or desk. I found the perfect chair…I thought.

It has thick padding, arm rests that fit me just right, and a little bit of a rocking motion. I like to gently rock. Especially when I’m thinking. 😉 Which I do a lot while writing a book, as we all know.

I brought the chair home and it barely fits in the area behind my desk. That’s my fault. I like to be in the corner and look out the window to the front of the house and the door into the main room of house. Which limits me of space because of 1) my husband’s desk and file cabinet. (He rarely sits at his desk. He just stores things on it…) He packs whatever he’s working out out to the nook table early in the morning and does his paperwork there.

Behind my desk looking out.

But I digressed. I love the spot where my desk sits. It makes squeezingh into the chair interesting, but once I’m there, I can put my feet up on a little stool under the desk, pull the keyboard out or set it on my lap, lean back in the chair, and type to my heart’s content. This is the most comfortable I’ve been typing a book since I started writing!

New perspective on my writing. While I tried to limit my goal on the books I plan to write this year, I also gave myself permission to not meet that goal if life intervenes. In the past if I didn’t get books out regularly, I would beat myself up and make myself miserable, pushing to get more written and put the book out there because the reader wanted it.

Now, I write the books I want to write and I still try to keep a new one in each mystery series coming out every 6 months, but I’m not as driven to make sure every genre I write has a book coming out. That was driving me insane. I’m sticking to the genre that has always called to me- Murder mystery.

I’m super excited about the Gabriel Hawke book I’m writing right now. I finally connected with someone who knows a lot about the topic in the book and feel I have enough information to make this a good solid book to help showcase a cause and epidemic that needs more attention. I’ve never considered myself an activist, but I have always been driven to write books about justice. And everyone deserves that.

Next month learn about my decision to end a series and how I hope I didn’t disappoint readers.

Fairy Tales, The Easter Bunny and a New Touchstone

~ janispattersonmysteries ~ 3 Comments

by Janis Patterson

Every year I look forward to the holiday season. I love Christmas – the decorations, the carols, the promise and reassurance of my faith, the bonhomie, the electric excitement in the air. New Year’s is the symbol of new beginnings and though I have never been able to keep a New Year’s resolution for more than a few weeks there is always a clean, untried ‘blank-slate’ feeling to a new year.

Every year I look forward to the end of the holiday season and the return of real life. While wonderful, the holidays are exhausting and pretty much take over your life. Parties to give and attend. Presents to buy. Calls to make. Lunches with friends. Wrapping presents. Visiting family for extended gatherings with out-of-town members. Taking down and putting away decorations. Getting the house back to the familiar chaos we call ‘normal.’ Thank-you notes to write. Yes, it’s tiring, to say the least.

Now we’re eleven days into the New Year, which makes it not so new any more. And, usually after all the holiday hubbub dies down, it’s not so different from the year before. I still have deadlines and stories crying to be written. The laundry pile stays pretty much the same no matter how many loads I do. Since the holiday leftovers are long gone I must contrive something for dinner every night and fix a lunch for The Husband to take to work. Not so different from last year and many years before that.

Still, there is something about the turn of the year – as artificial a delineation of time as it might be – that makes us think. Personally I want to make it a touchstone for upping my career game. A touchstone, not a resolution. Resolutions are usually regarded as hard things, immobile things, things you must do every single day for the rest of the year. I don’t respond well to hard, immobile and must do. Never have, and probably never will.

So what did I do? In between huge meals with family and much-needed naps I spent New Year’s Day thinking about what I wanted to accomplish career-wise in the new year and what it would take to get it done. Of course I thought about a few things that are definitely ‘wish list’ and probably never going to happen, but I did try to keep things ‘real.’

First of all, I know that no matter how much I hate it, I’m going to have to do a lot more publicity. I have an extensive backlist in several genres and yet my sales would have to work for a week to get up to pathetic. It’s all about discoverability, and that means getting your name and your work out there.

For a long time I followed the fairy tale that if your book is good, it will sell. (I refuse to tell you how long I believed in the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny…) As nice and tidy as that would be, it doesn’t work. People don’t buy what they can’t see, and well-promoted garbage will pretty much always outsell a good book buried in the ever-increasing tsunami of available books. While a writer can live in the ivory tower and do nothing but write (my personal dream) it’s time for me to realize that if I want to be a selling writer, I need to get out there and sell. The Tooth Fairy has retired.

Neither can you live on your backlist alone. New releases feed the machine. It’s the genre writer’s version of publish or perish. Readers – especially genre readers – are exceptionally voracious, with some reading more than one book a day. Writers can no longer afford the luxury of doing just one book a year if they want to keep their name in front of the reading public.

Last year I wrote five books. This year I have to get them all out. (Last year was an ivory tower year for me for several reasons.) This year I hope to do – and release – four. Remember what I said about a touchstone? I didn’t promise myself or make a resolution to write and release four; that’s too solid, too demanding. During the year when I hit a wall, when my career seems more trap than joy, I’ll think back to that food-stuffed, family-surfeited New Year’s Day and remember what I thought about the forthcoming year. Then I can decide if it is still what I want, still feasible, still relevant to my current reality.

I hope it will be. But it doesn’t have to be. But whatever I decide, though, I have to do what needs to be done to make it come true.