This was going to be a retrospective piece until it wasn’t.

2018 sort of sucked in a lot of ways – full stop.

That said, I don’t think it’s worth dwelling on anymore. We’re past the hard parts and into the start of something else.

So let’s look forward. What is it that I’m anticipating? What’s there to be happy about that will happen?

Well, for one, I’ve got a book coming out. HELL CHOSE ME. Click on the words. I think it’s a damn good novel and I hope you do too.

There’s a whole mess of other great writers with work out there this year as well. Steph Post did a better job than I’ll ever do pulling all that together for the first chunk of 2019 over at her blog.

Over at the podcast, I’m thrilled to have authors David Bowles, Vivien Chien, Errick Nunnally, Jeff Somers, Gary Phillips, Aaron Clark, Rachel Howzell Hall, Nikki Dolson, Shaun Harris, Fred Van Lente, Sarah Read, and Cina Pelayo (y’all thought I was fucking sleeping over the break?), among other planned guests to carry this first quarter of interviews. No podcast of this format is pushing content from as diverse a stable of creators as the bastard title is and I aim to go even further outside the lines this year.

And let me tell you, a few of these episodes are in the can and are fantastic.

I’m aiming to continue my query quest with a novel called HITSTER that I hope y’all get to read in the future. In the meantime, I’m writing something else called ALL-CITY BRUJA that’s nothing like what you’ve read from me before and as personal a story as I’ve ever written about my home and my cultural identity. My full story concentration will be on that for the next couple of months, but I’ve also got that desire to write a few shorts out of my comfort zone. I aim to shop to places I never shopped to before – get that old feeling of rejection and desperation back in my gut, you know?

Speaking of identity; I think I want to continue diving into those waters even more this year. I have tiny ideas – nothing fully formed just yet – but there’s something I have the itch to say. Here’s hoping that lands too.

And shit, if all else fails, we got Avengers: Endgame, don’t we?

Be easy.