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Well, it’s official 2006, thank God, thank Goddess, pick an appellation for Diety. My own family has now lost three people this past year. My grandmother, who raised me, I know that I’ve mentioned here. I believe I also mentioned my uncle who died of cancer very suddenly this spring. Now, at the end of the year we lost my Aunt Bev. Very sudden. We’ll be headed out of town for it tomorrow. I was talking to my Uncle Monk, and it was he that pointed out what a rough year it has been for the family. It has.
2005 was a funny year for us, and for the country, I guess. What went well, went very well. What went badly, went badly. Some of it not as bad as it could have gone, God knows, but bad enough. We had some close friends that survived some rather harrowing medical problems. We had emergencies that didn’t go as badly as they could have; no one died. So all in all, not a bad year.
It was an amazingly good year for business for us. Both Anita and Merry continue to sell beyond any dream I once I had. Doing this well, I am now setting my sights higher, because that’s what you do in a career. You do as well as you can then try to figure out a way to do better. We signed a deal with Hollywood, at last. Jon and I are doing the script. A new adventure opens up. The fourth Merry Gentry book came out; A STROKE OF MIDNIGHT. I wrote two books this year; MICAH and DANSE MACABRE. The first was the very first novellite. Too long to be a novella, but not long enough to be one of my novels. DANSE MACABRE is the thirteenth Anita Blake novel. Amazing that I’m that far in any series. All the Merry books and all the Anita books since we went into hardback have hit the New York Times list. Like I said, business is good.
Jon, Trinity, and I, are doing well, personally. We are healthy, happy, and every year Trin gets more interesting and more of the person she will be. I could talk about the family deaths, and how that effects me, us, but I won’t. It is enough that we are well, and I’ll leave it at that. Now, I’m going to find all the new calendars and put them up in their various spots. The Airedale terrier calendar goes on my office door to remind me to be courageous, to never give up, to have fun, and that I am safe. The Cobblestone Way calendar goes in my office. It’s the one I use to keep track of page count. I’ve used this calendar for years, it just pleases me. The pug calendar goes in the kitchen as the family calendar. Trin has a calendar in her bathroom that she uses to keep track of things, but I’m not sure she picked one yet. And the last calendar goes in the master bath; a songbird calendar. It comes with a CD of the bird songs for each month’s bird. Don’t ask me why I put a calendar in the bathroom, I’m not sure. But I know that the birds remind me to keep it light, and that there is beauty and song, and joy, even when things aren’t going so well. Different birds can remind you of different lessons; it can be surprisingly helpful each month’s new little bird. Anyway, that’s the calendar rundown. I actually bought a few more, every since that one awful year when no calendar in my office made me happy with the book I was doing. Heck, I think that was the year, or year and a half that I wrote A STROKE OF MIDNIGHT and INCUBUS DREAMS. I must have gone through nearly a dozen calendars on my wall, and door, and nothing made me happy for more than a few days. I even tried a Penguin calendar. It may work for Anita, but it didn’t work for me. I do buy it every year for her, like a gift I’ll never be able to give her. Funny, I guess.