2017 was a strange year. It had some tremendous highs and a few lows.

The hardest part of the year was putting down Wally-cat. He was still a young cat (6 years old) when the decision was made. He was suffering from kidney failure and it was a genetic thing that nobody caught until he became a little old. I buried him next to Sophie out on the farm, so he can hang with the only dog he ever liked. I still miss him and occasionally catch myself asking Casper where his brother is.

I had to rehome Odin due to him just not getting enough attention. I hated leaving him in his crate all the time but with my work schedule it wasn’t feasible to do much with him. Fortunately I found a nice family that I knew who were willing to take him on. I still get to go visit him regularly and he’s always happy to see me. He traded 8 teenage boys for 2 teenagers, so he’s pretty happy that he has someone to run with still.

My work was exhausting this year but I survived it. We had a staffing shortage at one point and I was working 6 days straight, 24 hours a day for just over three months. That killed any extra energy I might have needed, but it all worked out in the end.

I also survived another Libertycon. This one was a lot of fun because I got to hang out with people I hadn’t seen in years and finally met the guy who pretty much is my twin, Jon Del Arroz. Now that people have seen us in the same place together they will quit confusing us.

In 2017, I released or turned in a lot of stuff for the publishers. The list follows:

1. Paint the Sky, my Four Horsemen Universe short story which featured the first Liberian mercenary unit in the 4H universe. It was in A Fistful of Credits, and edited by Mark Wandrey and Chris Kennedy. It was pretty popular from what I heard.
2. Magnum Opus was released in the Michael Z Williamson Freehold universe anthology, Forged in Blood. Again, pretty good reviews (61 five-stars as of this moment) and lots of people really liked Rowan Moran, the Operative in my story. I love working with Baen Books and really, really need to get them a standalone or series.
3. Corruptor was re-released as a science fiction YA book in September, mere days after Forged in Blood came out, which is what it is at it’s core, by Anticipation Press. I’d resecured the rights to the novel earlier this year and it was almost immediately snapped up by another publisher. The sales have been slow, but I figured that would happen due to it being 7 years old. However, the publisher didn’t get the rights to a single novel, oh no. As you’ll see later on this list, they got much much more.
4. Then I got word that the Japanese translation of Kaiju Apocalypse came out in Japan from Takeshobo. The cover was awesome and I really enjoyed seeing my name in Japanese. I’m still waiting to see about getting a copy of that novel.
5. Right after that I turned in the long-awaited sequel to Corruptor, titled Devastator. This is coming out in 11 days (Jan 12) so be ready. I was insanely thrilled about getting this one in, since I got to go back to The Warp and do crazy things that break the laws of physics and tease with something else going on in my electronic worlds.
6. Best of all, I closed the year off with a bang as my second Kakata Korps short story was picked up and published in The Good, The Bad, and The Merc, the third anthology in the 4HU. Keep the Home Fires Burning is about honor and duty, while keeping the family and tribe together as a whole. It’s also about a bit of becoming more than just a mercenary unit, and potentially becoming a savior to a people who have been forgotten as the world moved on.

This was a fairly productive year overall. Basketball continues to do well as last year’s returning players have helped the newcomers adjust to the frantic pace I demand, as well as how to properly run Havok and the offense. Win percentage is up over last year at this point, and I can see this team doing very well at the year end tournament.

So a pretty eventful year overall. No complaints from me here. I hope that 2018 can be even better.