Apparently, if you are a writer and have actually been doing that regularly, you are expected to write something witty or moving or inspiring to round off the year’s end for your readers.
Honestly, I got nothin’ for you guys. All thirty or so of you, up from the dozen regular visitors from a year or so ago when all I had a was dying archival website and a failed, defunct blog.
Rebranding was scary, believe me. It was time, though. I’d been having problems with the Campfire’s original hosting provider, I’d started moving more and more of my fanfiction stories over to AO3, and I was writing more and more original fiction that just didn’t fit on the old site under the old name. So I did some research, took a class about blogging for authors, picked a name and bought up some domains. And started blogging on the one that rhymed, and putting more effort into being more consistently productive in both my writing and my social media presence – you can actually follow me on YouTube now just like you can on Pinterest or G+. (Do be warned that half of what I like or list on YouTube is probably NSFW, and not just because the Hellsing Ultimate Abridged playlist is on there, either.)
Ah yes, the writing – I did do a lot of that this year. I made it all the way to the final round in the NYC Midnight Short Story Challenge, and that in a genre I didn’t really consider to be one of my better ones. I won at Camp NaNoWriMo in April and regular NaNoWriMo in November. I wrote three novel-length stories in total, two original and one fanfiction, finished some fic series, continued a few others, and did some more short stories – including a couple of Yuletide Treats that no one will know I wrote until tomorrow. 
Oh, and I published a new original short fairy tale reimagining, which as of today has been downloaded by 133 people, yay! It’ll be double-yay if I can get any of those people to buy the (much longer) sequel in 2016, but we’ll just have to wait and see how that works out.
On the personal front, it’s been a mixed bag. My wife’s company relocated us to Indiana, where we got a very nice house which she immediately set out to DIY the hell out of – I’ve been living in a construction zone all year, and it’s been driving me nuts. The downstairs is done now, though, and it’s gorgeous, and I’ve been promised a breather from having paint and tools scattered around everywhere until at least late spring. Indiana turned out to be 
The Kingdom of the F**king Spiders and no one told us, which was not cool of whoever is in charge of making sure people know those sorts of things. The weather here is a big improvement over the weather in Texas, though, so that’s been nice. I’ve gone from about 40% gray to around 75% silver-gray this year, which was not so nice – not that you can usually see it, because I keep it colored with a very pretty color called Plum Black. Oh, and my wife’s company decided to lay her off – along with 499 of her co-workers – right before Thanksgiving, so things were kind of stressful around here for a while. Luckily she’d suspected something was up and had already started looking, and her new job starts in January so we don’t have to move and start the DIY process over again in a different house, because I would go absolutely batshit insane if that happened.
In the world at large outside of my house…okay, to all of you who aren’t from here: Yes, we know our elected officials are all nuts and our political scene is a joke. No, we can’t do anything about that, sorry – we lost control of that situation years ago. And the reason I don’t usually mention politics or most current events here on the blog is because I think there’s enough of that out there already and sometimes people just need a break from it. So we’ve got The Happy Page and we have updates and teasers and interesting little things and the occasional bout of snark, and the only way I’m putting politics on here is if someone presents a write-in candidate we can pretend we’re trying to O’Neill into office a la Voracity’s The Next President of the United States. I will happily campaign for a fictional character, 
just make sure they meet the basic requirements for the job. Nominations are welcome in the comments, we’ll pick the best one we can.
Hmm, for not having anything to say that sure is a lot of text, isn’t it? It is, I know it is. Anyway, I hope you all have a safe night tonight, and that the beginning of 2016 is good for you and gives you a lot to look forward to over the next twelve months. Happy New Year, everyone!