{"id":2039,"date":"2020-01-05T13:20:52","date_gmt":"2020-01-05T18:20:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vg-ford.com\/?p=2039"},"modified":"2020-01-05T13:20:53","modified_gmt":"2020-01-05T18:20:53","slug":"a-new-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vg-ford.com\/?p=2039","title":{"rendered":"A new year"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"236\" height=\"236\" src=\"https:\/\/vg-ford.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/goal-crushed.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1468\" srcset=\"https:\/\/vg-ford.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/goal-crushed.jpg 236w, https:\/\/vg-ford.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/goal-crushed-150x150.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 236px) 100vw, 236px\" \/><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;ve been very quiet here lately. The holidays are rough now &#8211; between the deaths of my mother (who adored Christmas) and my husband (who didn&#8217;t like commercial aspects of Christmas but loved the family aspects), I&#8217;m not really in the mood to celebrate anymore. It was a quiet Christmas and Thanksgiving, and that&#8217;s what I needed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now, though, it&#8217;s a new year. 2020. A new decade, even. A time to look forward, not back, and to figure out what the next 10 years of my life will look like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Which is why there&#8217;s a new theme on the website. I&#8217;m not the person I was when I first set up this page, and while sometimes I miss her (especially the carefree nature of her life, back when the only thing that she had to worry about was getting to work on time), I&#8217;m enjoying this new Val as well. I&#8217;ll be 50 this decade. A milestone my husband didn&#8217;t get to. I&#8217;m moving from Mother to Crone in terms of my mindset, and that&#8217;s not something I&#8217;m dreading.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Odd to think that 10 years ago, I was still thinking of having children, of buying a house near my folks, of enjoying their retirement and the adventures they wanted to go on. Now, I&#8217;m thinking about the cleaning out of the detritus of my old life, redoing the interior of the duplex I rent, helping my dad through the rest of his life. And my writing is changing too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I don&#8217;t know if I&#8217;ll ever get back to Carter&#8217;s Cove. Every time I&#8217;ve tried, it seems to veer off the wrong way. I will be rewriting and releasing the stories that are already written, but I don&#8217;t know if there will be any new ones. We&#8217;ll see. I am also finally working on the first Pendragon novel, and I&#8217;ve got some really good ideas for Resonant Frequencies. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This year, I&#8217;m doing 2 cons (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.ravencon.com\/\">RavenCon<\/a> in April, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.balticon.org\/wp54\/\">Balticon<\/a> in May), and contemplating 2 weeks at Pennsic. I&#8217;m going to have books with me at both, but probably not a table. The goal this year is to write out <em>Belladonna Dreams<\/em> and <em>Resonant Frequencies<\/em> in rough draft. I&#8217;m not sure about NaNo, but we&#8217;ll see.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been very quiet here lately. The holidays are rough now &#8211; between the deaths of my mother (who adored Christmas) and my husband (who didn&#8217;t like commercial aspects of Christmas but loved the family aspects), I&#8217;m not really in the mood to celebrate anymore. It was a quiet Christmas and Thanksgiving, and that&#8217;s what &#8230;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/vg-ford.com\/?p=2039\">>>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vg-ford.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2039"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vg-ford.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vg-ford.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vg-ford.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vg-ford.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2039"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vg-ford.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2039\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2040,"href":"https:\/\/vg-ford.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2039\/revisions\/2040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vg-ford.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vg-ford.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vg-ford.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}