Sorry I've been missing in action for the past few weeks. The latest edition of The Crow is due on bookstore shelves on the 15th, so after ringing in the New Year with a few friends, I got back to work, trying to meet my deadline. It's at the printers now and thus out of my hands. With luck, I might get my copies on Friday. (A quick glance at my calendar just informed me that this Friday is Friday the 13th. Got to love those positive omens.) Then I get to figure out how I'm going to get them distributed amidst the Byrne clan migration this weekend.
Family get-together again?, you say. Yes, indeed. My Uncle F.T. died last September. We'll be burying his ashes this weekend in the bay area. This snuck up on me. I don't feel ready for it. Do you ever?
Some of my cousins will be in town. That's good. I've been carrying around a present in my bag for my little cousin Rhiannon since I bought it a month ago. I'll see her this weekend. She's a good kid.
I went through a pretty hardcore depression last summer amidst three deaths in the family and a bunch of other personal shit I was wading through at the time. At some point over the winter I must have pulled myself together some. I noticed just a week or so ago, actually. Just a passing thought that I'd been feeling better in the last few months. Stronger. More myself. Just in time to feel it come creeping back in. I'm trying to shovel through it before it builds up. Snowdrifts in my soul.