Ok, ok. Like most things I’m recapping here 2012 wasn’t a full calendar year of blogging, but it was the year I started blogging. I hope to be much more consistent with posting in the year going forward than I was in the last and  maybe grow something of an audience. As it stands, most of my readers come here directly from Chuck Wendig’s terribleminds.com when I participate in his week flash fiction challenges. Which is cool, but I’d like to hook more of those folks into sticking around than I currently do.

Still, while the website’s success, like my writing success, has been humble I still find it exciting and impressive in it’s own way.

For example: I had visitors from 35 different countries last year. The idea that my words have been read around the world? Cool.

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It’s out! Inklestudios “Future Voices” anthology is now out in app form. You can find it in the iTunes store here.

It is really cool to be able to download an app and find my story inside. I’m looking forward to exploring and reading the other ten stories in the anthology. Eleven pieces of interactive fiction for free? What’s not to like about that?

Well well well. It’s been quite some time since I posted here (though I have two recent flash pieces up here and here). November and December turned out to be lost months for my writing, blogging and studying. Looking back I think the problem was that I had not yet made those things regular enough habits that they could withstand the turmoil going on around here at the end of last year. Along with everything going on with my wife’s cancer (things continue to look very good on that front!) it was the end of semester at work and that always brings a lot of extra work and of course there were holidays to think about. With all of that going on I guess it’s only natural that some things suffered. Still, if I have one simple goal for 2013 it is that I want to make writing (including blogging and studying) such an integral part of my daily life that even in the hard times I don’t stop. My personal motto for the year is: If you treat it like a hobby then it’ll never be a job. Or a career. I didn’t stop doing my job when life got hard and going forward I don’t want to stop my writing either.

January has been a much better month and after taking a couple of weeks to enjoy something of an at-home holiday (and a wee bit more paperwork for the job) I’ve used the free time I have right now to help get these things back on track. Here at the blog the first thing I’m going to do is a series of looking back/where things stand posts. I know these are usually done in late December or early January, but I make the rules around here and I say that as long as I get them done in January then it’s all good. The first of these will probably be out later today with more coming daily. So how was your end of 2012? And how has 2013 treated you so far?

This is an update for all those who may have read my post about my wife’s recent cancer diagnosis and surgery. Today we finally got the word from the doctor that they’ve determined her stomach cancer is stage 1. She’ll need medicine for the next six months and regular checkups and imaging tests, but no chemo. From all my personal research into these matters I can tell you that this is great great news. There’s a lot of reason to hope that the surgery will have cured her cancer and there’s no reason to believe she won’t be able to live a full and long life going forward. As you might suspect we’re incredibly happy right now because this was the best possible result we could hope for.

Hello all,

It’s been quiet around here for a while and I thought I’d put up a post explaining why. I should warn you that this will be a very personal post and there will probably be more of them to come in this vein in the future. This is, after all, my personal blog and it will always reflect me and my life. My life, I should say our (my family’s) lives, have been pretty permanently changed over the course of the last week. Let me get to the heart of the matter and present what I wrote on Facebook a day or so ago:

    Hello all, serious personal update today. Maybe too serious/personal for Facebook but I’ve told all the people in person I’m able to so now I feel it’s time to make it more general knowledge.

This week my wife, Mira, was diagnosed with stomach cancer. Yesterday, she had surgery and they were able to save nearly 40% of her stomach. As I understand things, that’s really good news. We have to wait a week to find out more detailed information, such as stage of the cancer, and a fuller prognosis.

Mira is a big believer in prayer and I know she’d be happy to know that other people are praying for her. If you do pray, please say one for her. If you’re not big on prayer (like me), positive thoughts are just as appreciated.

Cliched as it is to say, it’s true that it’s really amazing how quickly your entire life can change. It’s still early days for us as we try and navigate this turn our lives have taken, it’s all happened so very fast, but we will take it day at a time and move forward doing whatever we need to do so that Mira can get back to living a full, happy and healthy life.

So, yeah, life has thrown us a very unexpected and scary curve ball. The definite confirmation that Mira had cancer came this past Monday. We knew there was  a strong possibility she had cancer about a week earlier. The week and a half before that my son had been in the hospital with a not too serious issue (that’s all cleared up now). That actually turns out to have been a blessing because it was my wife being at the hospital anyway and not feeling well that ultimately led to her getting some tests and screenings done that discovered the cancer.

As I’m sure many of you know early detection is probably the most important weapon you can have on your side in any battle with cancer and while we don’t have an official determination of the staging yet there is a lot of reason to hope this was caught pretty early.

So, the early not-too-serious medical issue and the more recent ultimately serious medical issue have not left me a lot of time (or the mental state) for writing, blogging or studying. I’m going to try to make a concerted effort to get back to all of these a little bit each day, mostly because I need the stress relief that comes with doing something productive that feels like I’m moving forward and accomplishing something that’s under my control. Right now all of my energy is being split between worry and holding everything together. I know I can’t maintain that sort of state indefinitely so I’ll be turning to my personal pursuits as a kind of self-therapy.

A final note: you can expect more posts on this topic going forward. I will be getting back to posting about comics, jazz, books, writing, etc. but I’ll also be visiting what’s going on with me and my family as my wife’s battle with cancer has only just begun. Some might wonder or question if a blog like this is the proper place for putting information like this just “out there”, but I find it helpful to “talk” about what’s going on, even if it is just to the ether of the internet. I’ve also become a recent believer in the power and importance of people sharing their real-life stories of difficulties in their lives and the real emotions that they feel about them. I had actually been planning to write a post about the power of such public sharing. I’m still planning too, and soon, but now I will not just be pointing you to examples I’ve seen of others sharing their stories but becoming one myself.

Until next post then, go hug someone you love.