Welcome to my brand-new website! This will be my permanent home for my writing, podcasts, audio dramas, and other creative things I do. There’s not much here yet, but eventually, there will be a podcast feed, a storefront for my original writing, links to other projects I’ve been involved in, and (maybe, if I feel like re-activating it) a link to my freelance work storefront, and a portfolio to go with it.

This is the first of my weekly blog posts for 2015. There was a time when I blogged regularly at my free WordPress site, but I haven’t written anything there in more than two years. What inspired me to start blogging regularly again was that Evo Terra and Sheila Dee, whom I respect very much as podcasters and as people, are setting off on an adventure around the world in 2015. I’m already checking their site regularly for new updates. I think what they’re doing is amazingly cool, and I wish I had the means or the opportunity to do something that cool this year, but I’m not quite there yet. They are using their new website, ShEvo.wtf, to document their journey through blog posts, podcasts, and photos. The journey I plan on taking this year won’t be as exciting or as epic as theirs, but in that same spirit, I plan to use this site to blog about it.

Evo and Sheila have named their journey “The ShEvatical.” I’m naming mine “The Year of Renewals.” I want to take a year to restart and revive past projects that I’ve left unfinished, renew old interests that I’ve let fade into the background, and set off on some new adventures that I’ve been putting off for too long. Here’s a partial list of them.

Projects to Revive

• The Questors from Effpiem. This was an audio fiction serial that I wrote and produced for Jack Mangan’s Deadpan Podcast between 2008 and 2010. I had so much fun writing and producing it that I decided there would be a Season 2, so I deliberately ended Season 1 with a huge revelation that provided a good hook for a sequel. For various real-life-related reasons, though, I never did get around to writing or producing Season 2. It’s time to fix that.
• Samira’s Nation. This was the novel with which I won NaNoWriMo for the first time (all the way back in 2005!), and when I hit the 50,000-word mark, I was approximately a third of the way through the story arc I had planned. It’s the story of the battle for the destiny of a newly-forged nation on a planet named “Renewal,” so this would be a great year to continue working on it.
• Bridging the Spheres. This was my 2007 NaNoWriMo novel, my second win, and the closest to completion out of all my manuscripts. It’s a tale of conquest, exploration, discovery, and adventure on (and under!) the high seas in a world with civilizations both on land and in the ocean.

Interests to Renew

• Japanese. It was my major in college, and I still like it enough to want to do something with it, namely:
• Translation. I’ve been sitting on an opportunity to take a class in freelance translating for far too long. This is the year I’m finally going to seize the day. My original career goal was to be a Japanese translator, and I’d like to get back on that path.
• Reading. I’m on Goodreads, and as soon as 2015 starts, I’m going to click the button to set myself the challenge of reading 15 books in 2015. I know that the more you read, the better you’ll become at writing.
• Paper journaling/scrapbooking. I was very conscientious about keeping up with this at one point, but I’ve been falling further and further behind on it for years. I would really like to be up-to-date on it again.
• Star Wars. It was the very first fandom I ever got into seriously. I was 10 when the Special Editions were released, and 13, 16, and 19 when Episodes I, II, and III came out in theaters. I am (cautiously) excited about Episodes VII through IX, and I want to have a really good (or at least pretty good) Jedi costume in time for the premiere, preferably one that I made myself. I enjoy making costumes, and this has always been one of my dream costuming projects.

New Adventures to Begin

• Building my own computer from scratch. It’s just something I’ve always wanted to do. It will be designed to support my next adventure:
• Hosting my own podcast. I’ve been saying I was going to do this someday since I first discovered Podiobooks.com. That was in January of 2006. I have a copy of Podcasting for Dummies sitting on my bookshelf. It’s staring at me. The first 24 episodes will feature The Questors from Effpiem as the core content. At some point, one or both of the above-mentioned novels will show up on the podcast.

In any given week, I may write about my progress toward any one, or several, of the goals on this list. I may also write about other creative things I do. New posts will probably be published on Mondays or Tuesdays most of the time. I wish you all a happy, healthy, and adventurous 2015.