A frenetic Fall, restful Winter

Let me begin with: Thank you for being here. It’s been a wild few months! Between a change in my day job, a full grad school course load, a honeymoon trip, and all the regular ups and downs in life, my goal of a monthly newsletter slipped. I’ve spent the holidays relaxing, reflecting, and recharging. I’m excited for the year ahead, and I’ve got some fantastic news to share below…

Progress Update

I’m thrilled to announce that I’ve made my first professional-rate sale! My supernatural rom-com short story “Fake Trees and True Intentions” will be included in the forthcoming anthology Into the Deep, Dark Woods, coming in July of this year from WordFire Press! This story originally began as a homework assignment in my MFA program and I can’t wait for you to be able to read it. This story is the second story featuring Melvin Jones, the werewolf accountant from my 2023 story “A Taxing Moon”, which you can find in Particular Passages: The Autumn Breezeway from Knight Writing Press.

I’ve also just wrapped up my first full semester of the Genre Fiction MFA program at Western Colorado University and will soon be back at it when Spring semester starts next week. Learning to balance the work with my evolving job duties at the dayjob took some time, but I (hopefully) have the hang of it now.

In the midst of both the new job and new school program, my wife and I finally got the chance to take our honeymoon trip to the UK. There were many highlights for us, but I’ll let the pictures do the talking:

2026 Goals

My motto for this year is: Do Less, Play More. I over-committed myself last year and it took its toll on me. This year I want to put the same amount of work into a focused amount of things: my novel-writing, my academics, and maintaining my work/life harmony. I’m still working on The Gentleman Necromancer’s Guide to Gardening in the background, and later this year I’ll get started on my thesis project, which will be a novel-length work as well.

What I’m reading, watching, and playing

Vagabond by Tim Curry

I love reading autobiographies, especially from artists I admire. Vagabond, Tim Curry’s recently released memoir, was everything I hoped it would be. I came away from the book with a greater sense of the person behind his iconic roles, and I particularly appreciated the passion he has for the written word. He shares quite a few thoughts on acting craft that I found interesting as well. I think actors and writers have similar modes of inspiration and preparation despite the mediums being rather different. Curry mentions the importance of always trying to find the human element of his characters, even when they’re not human. That’s a great takeaway for writers, too.

Stranger Things Season 5 on Netflix

From its outset, Stranger Things wore its influences proudly on its sleeve. On the surface, it’s a love letter to the ‘simpler’ times of the 1980s, with a deluge of cultural references from the period in almost every shot. But the Duffer Brothers also captured the spirit of a bygone age of 80s storytelling, where the power of friendship triumphs over evil without turning grimdark and bleak as so many shows of recent years have done.

The ending has caused all sorts of reactions, and without giving spoilers, I think the ending suits the story that the Duffers were trying to tell. The ending is definitive enough that it provides a suitable off-ramp before the inevitable spinoffs begin. I feel content enough to move on. Or, perhaps I should say, “I believe”.

Dispatch by Ad Hoc Studio

It’s been years since a video game blew me away, but over the holiday break Dispatch grabbed hold of me and wouldn’t let me go. If you imagine Suicide Squad meets The Office, you basically have the gist of the game’s set up. Dispatch has surprising heart, stellar animation and visual design, and its choice-based gameplay is a clear evolution of earlier games like The Wolf Among Us or The Walking Dead.

The Signal Boost: Into the Deep Dark Woods!

Is it cheating to signal boost something I’m in? I’m thrilled to be in this anthology, but I’m also in brilliant company such as cover artist and author CL Fors, Sam Knight, Sherrilyn Kenyon, and Jonathan Maberry among others. Into The Deep Dark Woods just launched for pre-orders, which you can find here!

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