It's the New Year. So, I decided to take a break from my fully-intended incomplete web-only novel-length survival guide for alien encounters. If aliens visit/invade/attack/ or simply strafe your house over the holidays, then I guess you'll just have to PANIC and then get through the rest without me.

Because it’s the New Year, and because I’m traveling, and most importantly because I spend 97% of the time allotted for this blog making the gif associated with it, I thought I would wholly devote the remaining 3% of that time to a very unique and orriginal idea of laying out the plans for Alienjest Press in 2025.

So, here are a few of my plans:

Setting deadlines I will keep. (Already off to a good start, this will come in on New Years Day — so long as you are west of the Eastern Time Zone)
Many more deadlines I probably will not.
Over-planning.
Over-promising, but providing some clue as to what is coming over the course of this next year.

But here are my real plans. First and foremost:

I am and enjoy being a writer. I also am and enjoy being an educator. I've spent most of post-college teaching.

My goal, with the Junior Rangers Investigative Club Novels, is to entertain, but also to help share my love of the science and history protected by our national parks. And also to share my love of literature.

In addition, I have also devoted a decent amount of time over the past half decade to writing, (and a great deal of time in the interstitials before that,) and while I will never advertise myself as a spelling or grammar guru, I am always happy to share what I know about writing.

To the first end: Sharing my love science, history, and literature.

I am working on a new section of the website for educators. Within that section I will provide resources which will help anyone interested delve further into a variety of topics featured in the Junior Rangers Investigative Club Novels. These resources will be available for free for anyone interested: classroom teachers, parents at home, or projects on the side when you visit a park and want to learn more. Within this section I will also be advertising a set of programs I can provide for in class or library events, including read-alongs of my stories, writing workshops, or lessons on a variety of topics highlighted by my books, or about a few other pertinent areas of interest: Peace Corps experience, living in Lesotho, Africa, Living in China, Living in National Parks.

I will also be doing the thing so many writers do, which is sharing my own experience as a writer. I'll try to keep it brief and informative. I want to offer my experience, and a small bit of advice not because I think I know it all, but simply because I like it when other people write, and if you, for whatever reason stumble across my site but want to write yourself, and especially if you want to self-publish, there are a few areas where I think I can help. I’m still deciding where to put this, possibly in the blog, possibly elsewhere on the site. TBD.

Lots of stuff in those 2 paragraphs, but I’m working on it now.

Book #3:

The Treasure of Biscayne Bay will be released February of 2025!!!

There will be a more formal announcement with the exact date coming. But I’m happy to say that it is on the way!!!

I know, it is a bit behind, but by moving the book to the new year, I have a few more opportunities with how I release, reviews, and awards submissions. It's a good one! I’m really excited for everyone to see it.

Blog:

I’m having fun writing my Incomplete Alien Survival Guide, and expect to continue that for sometime. However, I could drop it at any time. (It's incomplete after all.) Once that is over, outside of announcements and a few other articles associated with Book #3, blogs for the foreseeable future will come in three flavors: Travel and Experiences in the Everglades. (I’m researching book 4 as I write it)

Stories about living in Lesotho. It's time I dusted off my old blog entries from the now defunct alienjest.com. Spell and grammar check them, and then entirely rewrite them to be better. I lived in Lesotho for just over 2 years, but from the impact it had on my life, it might as well have been a decade, and while I know things have changed since I have been there, I want to do a better job of sharing some of my stories from that time and highlighting some of the coolest group of students and teachers I’ve ever met. I expect, between all of the other Blogs, My reflections on Life in Lesotho (Less pretentious title TBA) will take me through the year, but plan on doing something similar for my life in China after that is over.

There will probably be an early entry in the coming weeks with more information on these.

Other projects.

Kindle Vella is gone. Coffee Chronicles never got traction there anyway. (Partially on me for not marketing it, partially on Kindle Vella for being a weird platform with an odd pay structure, and mostly back on me again because my dreams for this serial story far outweigh my ability to execute them. However, Kindle Vella did one good thing for me, and that was provide a platform which forced me to type my way through Chapter 1! That leaves me with Chapter 2. Chapter 3. And most importantly a better way to release all 3 of the planned Chapters of Coffee Chronicles.

I am and will be looking into this, and in the meantime, I will find a way to get Chapter 2 out, in a serialized manner which will force me to complete it too. This will not be a blog. It might not be anything public, but if it is, the I will announce that too.

Other sci-fi/fantasy. There are a few short stories kicking around in my head. There are a few novels too. I'll be writing and submitting several of these, and if anything hits, I will anounce it here.

There are some other, non-fiction things I’m working on too, and similarly, if anything comes of them, I will let you know.

For now, I just wanted to lay it all out,

and more importantly say Happy New Year, and

thanks.