On this last day of 2014, I wanted to take a moment to look back over the year in writing and creative pursuits.

I didn’t accomplish nearly what I’d hope. But there were some nice surprises on here as well.

• I wrote the first 200 pages of The Iron Harvest, the sequel to The Lead Cloak.
• I wrote The Little Book of Boards, a board member’s handbook for small (and very small) nonprofits. It will officially launch early in 2015, but the Kindle book is already available.
• On a lark, I wrote The Queen of Neptune, a Veronica Mars novella. This was a surprise. It was a fun challenge to write in someone else’s world and a change of pace from the fate-of-the-world-hangs-in-the-balance science fiction.
• I wrote “Eleventh Hour Brother,” a 1,000 word short story about Arthur Beautyman, the first time I’ve returned to him in almost two years. I read the story at Creative Colloquy in Tacoma, a fun literary event the last Monday of every month. It’s currently published in their anthology as well. I really want to get back to the next Beautyman novel sometime soon.
• I started a new podcast about writing, media, and culture with Seattle author Brent Hartinger. We’re 23 episodes in and still going strong.
• I relaunched this website, and added a status board that shows progress on my books.
• I created a new site for all three nonprofit books and have regularly blogged there.
• I launched translations of some of my novels in Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese and audiobooks of The Lead Cloak, The Little Book of Likes and just yesterday finished principal recording the audiobook for The Little Book of Boards as well.

OK… having listed all that out, I guess I actually accomplished a fair amount. Maybe I shouldn’t be so hard on myself.

But what 2014 really did for me is to crystalize that it’s time to start taking my writing more seriously. I don’t know exactly what that means in practice. But it’s time.

Happy New Year to you all. Looking forward to a great 2015.