Happy New Year!

Oh, sorry. I didn’t realize some of you were still hung over. Is this better?

No, now those of you in the cheap seats in the back can’t hear. Geez, there’s just no pleasing some people.

(I was going to write the preceding in different font sizes, but it seems I can only do that if I edit the HTML code. More of a learning curve than I’m interested in today. So much for being creative and clever.)

Anyway, Happy New Year. And to everyone who sent me a tweet thanking me for including them in my list of the best books of 2013, you’re quite welcome.

In this post, I thought I’d outline some goals for the coming year.

[Insert stock resolution about exercising more/eating and drinking less (or at least more healthy), saving more/spending less, working harder/goofing off more efficiently, being a better human being,  and rescuing puppies.]

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, here’s what I’ve been thinking in terms of the blogs.  I gave an update a couple of days ago as to their current status.  This year, I intend to blog more here.

I’ve been blogging once a week for the last year for Amazing Stories.  It’s been a lot of fun, but it’s also been something of a strain at times, not to mention a time sink.  Most  of the posts have been reviews (a complete list can be found here), which has cut into my other reading and blogging.  I’m not going to stop blogging there, but I am going to cut back to twice a month.

I’ve also started a series at Black Gate I’m really excited about in which I give an in depth look at one of the titles from the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series.  Those are going to run approximately once a month.  Since the inaugural post was the 5th most viewed in November, you know that’s a series I’m going to spend some time on.

As far as my blogs, I’m going to try and balance them out a little more, at least the fiction oriented blogs.  Dispatches From the Lone Star Front will still be somewhat sporadic, since those posts are historical and/or cultural in nature and involve some research.  I’ve got a couple in the works, but it might be a while before they see the light of day.

This blog will still be the main blog for general news, updates, and rants that aren’t related to a specific genre.  At Futures I’d like to read through the Heinlein juveniles in order, preferably about once a month.  Plus I’d like to revisit the Great SF series edited by Asimov back in the 80s and 90s.  There are a couple of dozen of those, so it’s a long term project.  I’ll probably read one every few months or so.  There’s nothing in particular on tap for Gumshoes besides the best detective and noir works I can find.  I’m going to balance my reading out so that all three genre blogs get at least two reviews a month.

In order to do that, I’m going to make some changes to my reading habits.  Since this post is a bit longer than I intended, I’ll discuss my reading plan for 2014 in the next post.