Author: Chris Tullbane

As 2019 seems to be the year of epiphanies, here’s my latest: moving is a pain in the ass and unconducive to productivity.

One very mad month later, we’ve fully moved in to our new house, if you ignore the small piles of boxes in certain rooms and the multiple-item-checklist of found issues that we’re still waiting for our builder to address. Despite the craziness of vendors/trades constantly dropping by unannounced, I feel incredibly fortunate to be in this beautiful new house.

The next step? Actually furnishing it.  😛 

I don’t want to blow anybody’s minds this early in the year, but I recently had an epiphany: February is a short month. Like… 1-3 days shorter, depending on the year and the month you’re comparing it to.

Crazy, right?

This particular February has felt even shorter, at least partly because I’ll be moving next week. In lieu of a stand-alone article, and given how quickly March is bearing down on us, I thought this would be a good time to check in on my 2019 writing goals.

If you spend any time on social media, you’ve probably seen the widely-circulated study that says most new year’s resolutions are abandoned by January 12th. Luckily, I’ve devised an ingenious solution to the problem… don’t even start your resolutions until mid-January!

Whew. That was easier than I thought it would be. Now we can all get on with the business of making ourselves better people! Ice cream and cake for everyone!

Dear 2018,

You’ve been a year.

I didn’t include an adjective, because I’m hardpressed to pick just one. So let’s settle for the obvious instead. Like your predecessor, the much-derided and ranted-about 2017, you’ve successfully persisted for almost exactly 365 days. Sometimes it felt longer. Other times–like the entire holiday season–it felt shorter. But I’ve done the requisite calculations, consulted a multitude of experts in the field, and offered up pastry sacrifices to the Oracle at Delphi, and I can conclude, with a fair bit of certainty, that you were, in fact, a year.

And that, as they say, is that.

Now, if you are looking for adjectives, I can do that too. Just be warned that it’s a bit of a mixed bag.

2018 is almost over, and 2019 is waiting out there somewhere in the weeds, flush with unknown potential and (presumably) bad intentions. Before the new year arrives, I thought it would be fun and topical to look back on the year that was.

Next week, I’ll cover the three 2018 accomplishments I’m most proud of, and the week after that will detail three challenges I’ve struggled with all year. But this week, we’re going with something a little simpler; cold, hard, analytical data.

That’s right… in a blatant case of Instagram-copying, I’m sharing this site’s five most viewed posts in 2018.

The Storm in Her Smile has now been shared in its entirety here on the site, and people seem to be enjoying it. In the near future, I’ll do another edit pass, and then post the full story as a separate page under the Short Stories menu, like I did with my prior short, The Stars That Sing.

In the meantime, let’s talk about the story itself. What went well? What didn’t? And what ended up confusing the hell out of me?

After four weeks, we’ve finally reached the end of my latest short story, The Storm in Her Smile. Last chapter, the Queen of Smiles finished the job that brought her to Mobile, sending Arturo Melendez to his grave. Now, all she needs to do is find whoever stole her electric motorcycle so she can get out of the city alive.

The problem, of course, to paraphrase Kathleen Turner’s character in Romancing the Stone, is that bastards have brothers…