To be honest, January passed in a blur. I started the month with nothing on my calendar for the year, beyond the idea of some books I wanted to work on.

Then our shower broke and we suddenly had to have a workman in our only bathroom for a couple of days. I hid in the bedroom with my laptop and got seriously down to work on Death’s Garden Revisited.

The book is coming together so well! It will collect around 40 personal essays about the relationships people form with cemeteries: from visiting family members and famous people to exploring history or leading tours or even doing archaeology. The cemeteries range across the US from California to Virginia and around the world from Paris to Venezuela. I cannot wait for you to see this book!

But of course, putting one book together wasn’t going to take up my whole year, so I pitched a series of anthologies to the Wily Writers collective. Not only were they excited about the idea, we’re putting together 5 books, which will be out later in the year. I’ll be editing the volume called Tales from Nightmare.

And that still isn’t enough to keep me out of trouble. I’ve been talking to agent about a book drawn from my collection of cemetery postcards, so I’m working on finishing that proposal, too.

And I heard from Lynne Hansen that she’s been working on the cover for Jet Lag & Other Blessings, the travel essay sequel to This Morbid Life. So I need to get a move on polishing up those essays, too.

No rest for the morbid, baby!