Personal Retrospective of 2015

The year 2015 draws near its end, it was a busy year – good and bad. I’d like to do a recap of the year for posterity, and maybe reflect on it or refer back to it as 2016 progresses. So let’s get the bad stuff out of the way to spend more time on the good stuff.

2015 – The Negatives

While 2015 started off decently, the last half of the year was atrocious for yours truly. The biggest travesty was the loss of our cat Caesar who we had the euthanize on the 4th of July. His kidney’s just rapidly failed on him. I was so mad at myself afterwards, reflecting that I could’ve been a better cat-owner-person to Caesar. He was always really clutzy and kind of dumb at times and simply could not stop barfing everywhere; but he was also my homie and the only cat who would come and lay right next to me on the couch. So I miss him a lot.

I wound up going to the hospital/doctor’s office three times this year – this is more than the last ten years COMBINED. Hitting my head on the shower door handle, being sick and other things – it just all happened in rapid succession this autumn. I and my pocket book was not a happy campy. Sure, I have insurance, but I see folks who have some accident befall them and bam! – despite insurance they have dozens of thousands of crippling dept. That scares me to no end.

Our car finally died. Michele had her Camry for 15 years or so and it just finally gave up at Long Beach Comic Con. A month or so later we procured a new car, a cute little FIAT that we call “The Beep Beep”, so it’s awesome to have a modern car that can actually play music and take less gas, but we were also spoiled by not having that car payment each month. Boo!

Lots and lots of layoffs at work. I’ve been lucky so far, but as Edward Norton says in Fight Club, “On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.” It’s a dour, dark cloud over my head, it weighs on me, but the easy remedy for that is to not give up on job hunting, and see if perhaps another and awesome opportunity shows its head.
Ok, that’s enough bad stuff. Let’s talk awesome things.

2015 – The Awesome Stuff

I didn’t make it into any books this year, but I am working on my next essay about Meteor-Horror Films for Michele’s next book, an anthology about Space horror films. My first draft is due at the end of January 2016, so getting into another book next year is looking way more promising.

I was pleasantly surprised that a review I wrote back in 2014 for The Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics was published in a physical version this fall. I had thought the journal was electronic only, so getting a print version and seeing a review I did in a real academic journal was awesome.

I was part of the new Ceremony of Innocence album “Labyrinth of the Mind” – a split album with the band Onyx. I did vocals and lyrics for three songs. Spoken words and lyric writing is not my strong suit, but it is still fun to do and be part of the creative process.

I got mentioned in the thank you notes of the newest TSIDMZ album “Rene Guenon Et La Tradition Primordiale”. I thought this was a big honour, so I am humbled by the mention.
I joined the Horror Writer’s Association in the spring time. This was at the urging of one of my heroes, Robert Cabeen and awesome friend David Lucarelli. It’s awesome to attend a meeting every month and feel motivated to keep plugging along. I am not writing as much as I want to quite yet, but I am definitely on my way and the organization definitely helps.

I became a writer for Heathen Harvest, an online zine or music site devoted to neofolk, metal and other underground forms of music. I’ve had 13 music reviews, 2 interviews, 3 concert reports and one really awesome book review I am the most proud of published there, with more submissions in the works.

I became part of the HP Lovecast Podcast with Adam Crowley, Michele Brittany and Jule Schlag. We meet once a month to discuss a work either by Lovecraft or influenced by him or in his mythos. It’s been awesome to read a story each month and talk with friends too. A nice get together to look forward to each month.

Michele and I celebrated out 10 year anniversary together. We didn’t really do anything, but instead are going to next year take our trip to Vegas and have a wonderful time.

Ate a Chicago style deep dish pizza – oh, you do not know how joyous that was…

Goals for 2016

There’s a lot of stuff I want to try and shoot for in 2016. So let me share some with yall, and maybe yall can help me in my journey.

Re-Animator Re-Edited – I want to take the original HP Lovecraft story of Re-Animator and edit it to get read of the serialized feel of it and instead flow like a cohesive story. Just for fun.

Edit my own anthology – my goal has always been to get essays published in 2 books before tackling my own book. Essay #2 happens next year (meteor-horror), so the time draws close for me to try a book on my own. I am seriously thinking about a neofolk book.

Lose enough weight to dress up really nice and get a nice picture done of me – I would love some awesome pictures of me done in a spyfi style or something. Overall, I would like to try and become more handsome or attractive next year for sure.

Get a fictional piece published in a book – I want to take a serious stab at creative writing at some point next year and submit a piece for publication

All the above goals I think are within reason. I’ll see what I can do!