2015 is going to be EPIC

This is going to be a big friggin’ year.

I have a lot on my plate for 2015, which I suppose is fitting for a year divisible by five. Why? I don’t know. Am I the only one who thinks that–that years with fives and zeros are more momentous somehow? I graduated high school in ’95, and college in 2000, so that might have something to do with it. Or I just grew up in a base ten number system. Whatever.

The biggest of the big deals is, of course, my books, of which I have two coming out this year: The Devil’s Only Friend, which hits US shelves in June, and Bluescreen, which will arrive in December. The former is book four in the John Cleaver series, or as I prefer to think of it, book one in a new John Cleaver series. It’s just as creepy and bloody and sad as the others, so if you liked them you’ll love this one. Plus the manuscript gave my friend nightmares! Bluescreen, on the other hand, is completely new–the first of a new series that I’m planning to continue in perpetuity. The series is called Mirador, and I love it, and I will write Mirador books until my editor pulls the tablet from my dead hands and gently closes my eyes, whispering something soft and wise about the transitory nature of life and our capacity for human greatness. Mirador is a cyberpunk series about a group of teen girls hackers who play a video games on the pro circuit. I’ll be dropping a lot of hints about Bluescreen throughout the year, so I don’t want to spoil too much this early, but I figure I can tell you the main character’s name: Marisa Carneseca. Her family owns a restaurant in 2050 Los Angeles called San Juanito, and her best friend–well, I’ll stop there. Just trust me, it’s awesome.

Speaking of things I can’t tell you, remember that link I posted on twitter and facebook January 1? Yeah, I’m not allowed to say anything else about that for another couple of weeks, and probably shouldn’t have posted that link in the first place. Secretsssssss. Suffice it to say that if I WERE to say anything, it would be AWESOME, and you would really want to hear it. So maybe come to the Salt Lake City Fan Experience January 29-31? I’m just sayin’.

Now, how about some awesome news that I CAN tell you? Most of you know that my brother and I are both writers, but you might not know that we have a sister who’s just as talented, if not more so, and focuses her creative energy in theater. Sometime in 2013 she and I teamed up and started working on adapting my historical vampire comedy A Night of Blacker Darkness into a stage play. We’ve done a few drafts of the script, and we’re very happy with it, and the play will be debuting this October in not one but two locations: the world premiere will be at Tennessee Wesleyan College in Athens, where my brother-in-law runs the theater department, followed closely by a second production at UVU in Orem, Utah. Blacker Darkness is probably my least-known novel, because it’s self-published and I don’t promote it a ton, but it’s a classic farce, in the vein of “Noises Off” or “A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum,” and honestly it will probably feel more at home on stage than it ever did in a book. It’s also pretty dark, so I guess it’s in the vein of “Noises Off” except with actual veins, and instead of a plate of sardines there’s a corpse. Everyone wants to lie to, steal from, or outright kill everyone else, and it’s awesome. I’ll be giving more details as I get them, but mark your calendars now.

2015 will also see me traveling all over the place. My convention schedule is filling up like crazy–I can’t announce too much yet, because I don’t know exactly, but at the very least I can tell you about the Fan Experience and LTUE, this month and next month in Utah. Internationally, I’ll be in Leipzig in March and Buenos Aires in May, and if I can find a way to swing it I’ll visit Mexico and Toronto as well. September, of course, will be the third Writing Excuses Retreat, which this year will be on a cruise ship in the western Caribbean. You can totally come with me on that one–there are still plenty of slots open.

What else? I have some short fiction projects I’m working on, and another book (the infamous Extreme Makeover, which I’ve been teasing you with for years) that’s currently being reviewed by my editor, so I hope you’ll see that soon, but it won’t be this year. I know I’m in at least one horror anthology this year, but I don’t know when it’s coming out. And, of course, I’ll be hard at work on John Cleaver 5 and Mirador 2. And then there’s that space opera I’ve always wanted to do….

All in all, a big year. I hope you can join me for some of it.