My personal top 10 of 2024

My friend Wally Conger started me on the habit of reviewing the last year and finding a top 10 drawn from pop culture encounters and/or life experiences of the past 12 months. Here’s what struck me as I looked back at what I absorbed during the past 366 days.

1. Psalms – My pastor friend Cory spent the month of December talking about the book of 150 worship songs in the Bible and how they are organized in a specific way, and I just realized that this year followed the Psalms for me — beginning with a call to “delight in the law of the Lord” and meditate on it day and night, growing my faith during the year and finishing with a season of joy — the last five psalms all begin and end with the directive, “Praise the Lord!” The year ends with a heart full of reasons to praise.

2. The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse – This amazing picture book by Charlie Mackesy has wisdom and delight on every page, with an approach to life that bookends well with my own of “Love your neighbor, and everyone is your neighbor.” Speaking of …

3. Michael Franti – A friend invited me along after she got free tickets from a friend. Neither of us had ever heard of Franti, but we were big fans by the end of the night. This is a man who recognizes that everyone is a neighbor, and his infectious music is full of that Big Love message. “Love Will Find A Way,” indeed.

4. Kinsey Milhone – Years ago I read Sue Grafton’s A is for Alibi and thought it was OK, but it took until January of this year for me to pick up B is for Burglar from the library. This time around I was hooked, and I finished U is for Undertow just before Christmas.

5. U2 and October – I wrote a couple of months ago how I liked U2 but couldn’t say I was a fan until a friend (Cory – see above) pointed me toward their second album. I “Rejoice” to say I have become a fan.

6. You Can’t Joke About That: Why Everything is Funny, Nothing is Sacred, and We’re All in This Together by Kat Timpf. I enjoy Timpf’s comments as a regular panelist on the Gutfeld! TV show, and her book is full of wit and wisdom. I’m looking forward to her new book, I Used to Like You Until … How Binary Thinking Divides Us.

7. Blue Bloods – My beloved Red would watch episodes of Blue Bloods all the time, but it was always when I was busy doing something else. This year I decided to check out what she saw in it, and I’ve been binging on the Reagan family for months.

8. Atomic Habits – I love the metaphor in James Clear’s book title. Forming good little (atom-sized) habits can make changes in your life with power like an atomic bomb. One of the more useful books I read this year, if only I would follow its precepts.

9. JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters – this book by James W. Douglass made my list last year after I had read just a few chapters. Once I finished it, I began recommending it to anyone who wonders why the U.S. government is the way it is. Douglass documents how it began with an unspeakable act.

10. The Godzilla Tree – My friend and former colleague Samantha Hernandez surprised me by sending me a Godzilla Advent calendar, which brightened my season and filled me with the Christmas spirit as only a kaiju a day can! One of the sweetest gifts I’ve ever received.

A somewhat lengthy explanation of how I might accomplish a ridiculous goal in 2025

For some time now, I have approached each new year saying, “This shall be the year I publish a book every month!” I published only two books in 2024, but in my humble opinion they were doozies — Dejah & Summer in the Time of Magic, my October instant adventure, and A Declaration of Peace aka War IS the Crime. The new title fits what I hoped to accomplish better, and the new cover is prettier, but I guess I still don’t expect it to be a best seller, although I hope and pray its philosophy will someday be more universal.

If I published 12 books in 2025, what would they be? It would presumptuous to list the full dozen — circumstances change and inspiration usurps expectations — for the first three quarters of 2024, I had no inkling that I might write and publish a fantasy about my golden retrievers, after all.

But if I had a guess, the books most likely to be published under my name in 2025 are:

1. Jeep Thompson and the Lost Prince of Venus — I have been writing this novel in fits and spurts for nigh on five years, and it is so close to the finish line that I felt like I could wrap it up in a week. The thing is, that particular week has’t arrived in close to a year. I wonder if the reader will be able to detect which parts were written in 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024, and how much of the last part was written in a 2025 burst of creativity?

2. See the World — I thought my post of that title would make a lovely opening to a book about paying attention to the wonders around us at any given moment — and we are given so many moments every day! — so I have been slowly collecting posts along that theme. As of today it’s a small collection, but it’s almost big enough to be a short book. I would not be surprised to reach the tipping point to comprise a volume in 2025.

3. Write Anything Until You Write Something — I’ve written plenty of times over the years about the art and craft of writing to the point where I could publish a disorganized but book-length collection of essays tomorrow. Two things hold me back: First, they really do need to be organized in some semblance of order. Second: Imposter Syndrome. Many writers who are better and more successful than I have written better and more successful books about writing. Who am I to presume I have anything worthwhile to add on the subject? Fortunately, the first obstacle is more powerful than the second, and so this is the most likely prospective book on this list to see the light of day.

4. No Chance to Dream — Back in 2018 (!?!) I wrote the first chapter of a fantasy detective story featuring the team of Adam Comfort, a rumpled human private detective, and Joy Emerson, a pookha who takes the form of a 6-foot-high skunk on two legs. Then I wrote six more chapters during NaNoWriMo 2019. I stumbled into Resistance when I couldn’t decide whether to determine whodunit before continuing to write or just continue romping along until the answer presented itself. Maybe 2025 is the year I decide.

5. The Girl, The Alien, and Me — Much like Dejah & Summer in the Time of Magic, in 2017 (!!!??!!) I wrote 10 blog posts that could be the first 10 chapters in a novel narrated by Hank Stiller, who meets a winsome young woman who seeks his help in a struggle against, well, Martians. The narrative stopped cold after I found myself killing off a character I really liked. The decision here is whether to go back and write earlier chapters to flesh out the character so the reader really feels the loss, go back and rewrite so he’s only injured and doesn’t die, or suck it up and continue the story after his death. (And as I’m writing this I suddenly OMG thought of a fourth alternative that might be The Answer.)

6-7-8. Myke Phoenix — This might be cheating, but my thickest book is Myke Phoenix: The Complete Novelettes, 700 pages compiling the 16 novelettes and two short stories I wrote over the years about the guardian of Astor City. If I broke them up into three volumes of five or six novelettes each, that could technically be the sixth, seventh and eighth editions in my challenge to publish 12 books during 2025.

9. I have written enough poems to produce a small book of poetry. Whether they’re any good is another story.

10. I have written enough short stories to make a small anthology. Again, I’ve only written a handful that make me think, “Yes. I’m glad I wrote that.”

11. Oh! I almost forgot that I have enough flash fiction to expand my soon-to-be-out-of-print volume 24 flashes and produce 96 flashes. Actually the only obstacle here is whether there’s a better title than 96 flashes, or I could have published it yesterday.

• So there are 11 ideas for books I could publish in 2025. Surely a 12th will occur to me by next Dec. 31.

What the heck. I accept the challenge.

Friends, years, and turning pages

It’s the time of year when thoughts turn to big plans and dreams, big hairy audacious goals, and closing doors. It can’t be 2025 already – that’s the year I am scheduled to turn 72, and I’m too young to be that old.

In 2024 I continued to process my grief, a process that took up as much time as anything during the year. When you’ve shared a home with someone for 26 years, her absence is palpable and omnipresent. But I was welcomed into a church family, along with my guitar of all things. I’ve always loved to make music but kept that light tightly covered by a bushel basket for the most part, until now.

During the year I met old friends and new for breakfast and lunch, including — can it be? — men friends. I’ve gravitated toward women through the years as both friends and companions, and I’ve rarely had close male friends, but I’m realizing that I’ve been shutting my half of the species out of the equation.

For a guy who bares his soul online every morning, I have had very few friends who “really” know me, but the circle of people who are closer to friend than acquaintance has thankfully grown this year, due mainly to that church family I mentioned.

The new friends include a couple of women who served as the first dating companions I’ve had since my steady date became a beautiful angel. One of these women has become a very good friend, and the other I expect to spend New Year’s Eve with and accompany into the new year, Lord willing. She will never replace Red in my heart, as I will never replace a certain gentleman in hers, but the thing about hearts is that there’s plenty of room to grow and make new spaces.