The beginning of the year is a time for starting over. We sweep away old habits, old messes, old goals we didn’t meet, and in their place, we impose new ones. This year, we tell ourselves, this year will be different. This year, we’ll exercise, eat better, work harder, have more self-control. We’ll set goals and then achieve them, whether they’re little goals like losing ten pounds or big ones like selling that book we’ve slaved over for years for a six-figure advance. Of course, the internet is replete with cautionary advice about not trying to do too much, but what does the internet know about dreams?

I published Becoming Mrs. Claus last fall. Those who were reading this blog last winter know that at that point, I never thought it would happen. I was ready to trash that book and work on something, anything else.

Then, two weeks later, I received a whiteboard that transformed my process. Suddenly, the book seemed . . . possible. Remotely possible, but that was better than before. I recognized the truth, that it would take a full-blown miracle to take this book from its then-present state and transform it into something I was willing to show to people, much less publish and sell. In a reckless mood, I claimed that miracle: I wrote it on a scrap of paper and stuck it to the whiteboard with a magnet.

And that wasn’t the only miracle I claimed. There was a second one: I wanted William Kent Krueger to blurb my book.

I met Kent and his wife at Crime Bake in 2016. Crime Bake is a New England conference for mystery writers. Kent was the keynote speaker, and I’d won Crime Bake’s short story award. I had dinner with Kent and Diane, both of whom are lovely people. In 2020, when I was getting ready to publish State v. Claus, I asked Kent to blurb it even though it wasn’t a mystery. His schedule didn’t allow him to do so, but he invited me to contact him again when I was publishing my second novel. (Oh, he of great faith!)

So last July, I contacted Kent and asked him if he’d be able to blurb Becoming Mrs. Claus. I knew he had a book coming out in early September and his publisher (one of the Big Five) was sending him on a six-week book tour, so I recognized that again, his schedule might preclude him from helping.

But this breathtakingly kind man who probably didn’t even remember me and who had every reason in the world not to add anything more to his packed schedule—he said yes.

Kent cautioned me that he wouldn’t be able to get it to me until late October, and was that okay? It was, I assured him, even though my cover designer was scheduled to be on vacation during the last week of October. We’d figure something out.

October turned out to be a hard month. Ned declined, rallied after his blessing, and then died. The next day, Becoming Mrs. Claus reclaimed my attention when my interior formatter sent a proof that needed to be reviewed over the weekend. And that was the beginning of the Season.

Day job, book production, scheduling of holiday events and readings, uploading manuscripts, arguing with book suppliers—all these things consumed my time and attention and energy. Becoming Mrs. Claus officially came out on November 15, but I was so busy that I barely noticed. The rest of 2023 was a whirlwind of commitments, obligations, and events, with a brief break for a mild case of Christmas covid.

And now, it’s time to start again. If only I knew just what I was starting.

Even before Becoming Mrs. Claus came out, I was asked whether there would be a third book in the Claus series. The answer, unsurprisingly, is I don’t know. I have some ideas, but I don’t want to write a sequel just to write one. We’ve all read series that went on too long, the plots becoming thinner. Not that I’d mind returning to Meg and the Clauses, because I like these characters. Plus, it’s always easier to work with familiar characters and familiar worlds than to create entirely new ones. But unless I can come up with a good, meaty story that’s worth my time and the reader’s time, I’m not going back to the Pole.

Of course, after a holiday season of good sales, part of me is afraid to try a new story. My novella, My Brother, Romeo, flopped almost right out of the gate. I don’t know whether this is because it’s an ebook and so doesn’t show well at live events, or people just don’t find the story interesting. If the latter, that saddens me, because to me, it’s a fun little piece. I’m actually contemplating doing a print run, but there are presently some strong arguments against it. Okay, one strong argument: money. Converting an ebook into a print volume would require reformatting the interior and the cover, and that would cost money I don’t have right now. It’s not for nothing that I’ve been reading Manjula Martin’s essay collection, Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living. Day job work is very, very slow right now (not unusual at the holidays, but stressful nonetheless). Even though sales of the Claus books were surprisingly good in November and December, I fully expect them to drop off now that Santa season is over. I’ll be speaking with a local book club in a couple weeks about State v. Claus; whether they’ll be interested in the sequel remains to be seen. In the meantime, I have dozens of copies of both books in my file cabinet. One last order of Becoming Mrs. Claus—an order I’d forgotten I’d placed—arrived today and will need someplace to reside until next fall when people start to be interested in Santa Claus again.

In nearly 25 years of self-employment, I’ve learned to take advantage of the lulls, because they don’t generally last. So I need to use this time to think seriously now about my next book. Of course, as any author or other creative knows, ideas don’t show up simply because you’ve got a few hours free here and there. The mind isn’t that tidy—mine, anyway. All I can do is to keep showing up, keep starting, keep testing what I start to see whether it’s worth continuing with. Julia Cameron talks about the importance of artist dates to fill the creative well; the present lull may be a good time for such artist dates, especially if they don’t cost anything. Maybe then, the juices can stir, and I might even come up with an idea that’s strong enough to be a book.

After all, if there’s one thing I learned in 2023, it’s that full-blown miracles really can happen.