My youngest daughter couldn’t join us for the holidays because she was traveling with her school’steam for a college bowl game, so we made sure she joined us “in spirit…”
This #saddrinkingfrog appeared in a lot of photos…
The lesson here is never, ever, be the one kid who isn’t around, lol…
Anyway, I hope you had a great Christmas and New Year. We had lots of fun and chaos with the girls around during Christmas, but New Year’s Eve itself was quiet, which is the way I like it.
I’ve always been one to make yearly goals and plans (two and five year plans as well), but not one to make specific New Year’s resolutions. And while I do think it’s worthwhile to take stock of what you’ve accomplished and what you hope to tackle, there’s always a dramatic tension between looking back too much, and looking ahead too hard.
In 2024, I retired as a federal agent. For the first time in nearly thirty years, I didn’t wear a badge and gun (nearly) everyday, and my life wasn’t circumscribed by my cellphone and dope deals; by long hours and stress. I wasn’t part of a team either, and in many ways, I lost my main “identity.” While it wasn’t as disorientating as I feared, it was still a dramatic change. Conversely, though, I did get to realize my other lifelong dream—writing full time—and while that wasn’t as “storybook” as I once imagined either (quiet autumn days in a rooftop garret with nothing but my thoughts), it was still amazing.
All in all, 2024 was a year of tremendous change for me, and on balance, all for the better. And all necessary.
As for 2025, while I don’t foresee a massive sea change like retirement, I won’t be standing still, literally or figuratively. I have a co-written feature film script that will start getting shopped around starting the first of the year (basically, next week), then I should be decamping to Los Angeles to work on not one but two series, and I have a new book set to come out later in the fall (the former Black Light Club, now The Lightning Tree). On top of that, I still have the solo feature film script I wrote in 2024 that I’m going to revisit the first quarter of the year, two new books I’m writing (okay, honestly, three), a revised Thirteen Days novel I hope to (finally) send out on submission by the second quarter, as well as two prior optioned books I hope to see some traction and forward momentum on. On top of that, I want to continue these regular Substack updates.
As I’ve said before, I don’t have anything super unique or insightful to say about the creative process, but I do hope to share the good, bad, and ugly of what it’s like to transition into a full time creative life, particularly for someone who is doing it so late. I had a fulsome professional career before I started writing seriously, successfully juggled both that career and writing for nearly 10 years, and now I’m trying to be as equally successful as “only” a writer and creator. One of the things I want to do in 2025 is truly embrace the business and community side of my “new” profession, something I let languish before because I simply couldn’t spare the time. While that doesn’t necessarily mean more writing conferences and conventions and such, I do want to be a visible advocate for the work we do, both in publishing and in film/TV, and specifically for the other writers and creators I’ve had the joy to get to know and who have helped me along the way. I hope to use this Substack as a way to do that.
If you’re a writer/creator, reach out to me, and we’ll see if we can’t get you some airtime here.
I’m looking forward to 2025 and I hope you are as well…
As always, feel free to—
Thank you for sharing this
Happy New Year, Todd! Great post as always!