Daily Journal 12/28/25
Okay, brief sabbatical over. Time to get back to work. I haven’t written in six days, unless you count working on the first draft of the programming schedule for Scares That Care’s AuthorCon VI writing (and I don’t count it as such). This daily journal always serves as my warm-up before heading into the fiction mines, so it makes sense to start here.
And if the number of typos I had to fix in that first paragraph are any indication, or the number of edits I had to make are any indication… I definitely need the warm up this morning. No newsletter today, I think. This can serve instead.
Drove up to New Jersey on the 23rd. Had a nice few days with my stepdaughter, Mary’s parents, and one of my sisters-in-law. Didn’t get to see the rest of the family because tis the season for colds, flu, and Covid. I had originally planned to come home today, but ended up having to leave the morning of the 26th, in order to beat that ice and snow storm that was supposed to hit. Of course, by the time I got home, they’d completly changed the forecast. But, meteorology, like so many other things in life, is an absolute crapshoot heading into 2026. We got a light coating of ice Friday night, which was gone by mid-day yesterday, and now the forecast says it will be warmer and dry today.
Sweet Jesus… did I really just sit here and spend most of a paragraph talking about the weather? I really have gotten old.
Spent yesterday at the now closed bookstore. Put a bunch more new inventory into the online store. Transported two big bags of leftover stock to a buyer. Arranged a sale for twenty-one long boxes of comics (Bronze Age to Modern) to another buyer, which I will deliver next Monday.
It occurs to me as I type this that I am drinking coffee from a Rickert & Beagle Books mug, which was given to me during a signing there. They were a great indie bookstore, focusing on speculative genres and located in Pittsburgh. Long gone now, as are Creatures & Crooks in Virginia, Dark Delicacies in California, Tubby & Coos in New Orleans (although they are doing pop-ups), Protean Books & Records in Baltimore, and so many other wonderful indi bookstores I’ve signed at over the years. I guess that puts Vortex in good company. And it makes me wonder if there’s someone typing right now with a Vortex mug full of coffee sitting next to them.
Ignore the mess on my desk. I moved things aside to make room for that fancy warming coaster my ex-wife got me for Christmas.
(And yes, my Mac desktop does have two keyboards, because I hate those tiny little keyboards that Apple includes with their desktops, and need a much wider keyboard to type on).
Anyway… I’ll split today. Part of it at the warehouse, part of it at the store, and part of it spent here at my desk, writing. At some point today I should redo the Whiteboard of Doom. Over the next few months (once the store is finally put to bed) my primary focus absolutely has to be FALLING ANGELS: THE LABYRINTH Book 4, ONE-EYED MONSTER, and a bunch of short stories (one for Jamie Flanagan’s Overlook anthology, one for editor Michael Bailey, one for editor Jim Cobb, one for Nick Roberts, and six remaining commissioned LOST LEVEL stories).
I think, given that this is a return to writing full-time after two years spent juggling writing with running a physical bookstore, that I may want to start setting some weekly and monthly targets, as well.
My social media usage continues to fall off. I check Bluesky and Twitter each once a day now, for the most part. Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Threads only get checked when I have something to promote. I am very content to continue relying on Patreon, Substack, and this space for the majority of pubic communications, and anticipate even more of that in the coming year.
If you are reading this, thanks for being here.