Let’s not sugar-coat it: this has been a dismal year in my corner of the cosmos.

It’s seemed as though every day or two Facebook has delivered news of death, disease, distress and despair in the lives of my friends and acquaintances in and out of the industry.

My emotional seismometer has recorded tremors of all flavors and sizes, punctuated by the 8.0 event of my own mother’s death October 1–the aftershocks of which continue to rumble through the landscape here. Just this week, I discovered a new ICD code and a new word: dysthymia.

But I don’t want to end the year on that note. So let me close the book on 2014 by sharing what I’m going to focus on for 2015. This comes from a new bio I wrote for ChamBanaCon earlier this month:

‘K-Mac has resumed work on FRAGMENTS, which will complete the story begun in VECTORS, and on two new projects:  a space-war thriller tentatively titled SLIPDRIVER, and an untitled magical realism time-travel novel. He is also assembling a collection of his best short works for e-publication. Donations of Pepsi Max, thin-sliced white American deli cheese, and beer nuts in support of these endeavors are welcome, as are random hugs and words of encouragement.’

I don’t have a publisher yet for any of those projects, but this is an era rich with possibilities. I can’t tell yet which of them will catch fire and shift from creeping in low gear to speeding in high, but I’m looking forward to finding out.

May each of you find comfort for your travails, company for your travels, and your own reasons to look forward to 2015.

Ad astra!