We’re coming up on the end of another year, and once again I’ve failed in my resolution not to let my blog lie fallow for too long. In my defense, 2023 has been a pretty busy year. But aren’t they all busy years? My new resolution is to bother with neither pledges nor excuses and simply write here when I can, when I feel I have something important to say — in this case, what I’ve been up to this year, when I haven’t been composing new blog posts.

Over the last few months I’ve been making slow but steady progress on a couple of prospective novels, both of which are a bit more epic in scope than either Atterwald or Nightmare Lullaby. In those two stories, my conflict was vital but small-scale, with only a handful of characters. Both the new projects place some focus on matters of state, with one beginning with the execution of a deposed king and the other with the assassination of a political leader. The cast of major characters, however, will remain small and the stakes will be personal as well as societal. I won’t go into much more detail about them at this early stage, but I will be posting some passages from them in the coming year.

Yet my greatest successes as a writer in 2023 have come through the Atlanta Radio Theatre Company. I have set a personal record of seeing three, yes, three new radio plays produced this year, and I’ve also ventured into new territory as a director and producer.

My first success this year came with A Pane of Black Glass, which tells the story of a witch who receives an obsidian mirror from the mother she doesn’t remember; through the memories she recovers, she gains the knowledge she needs to save her best friend from a Bluebeard-like killer. The idea of a mirror as a means by which buried memories might be recovered was first suggested to me by a friend in ARTC — and I’ve learned to pay close attention whenever one of these brilliant people has an idea to share — but as I worked on it, it took shape as a retelling of the Grimms’ “The Robber Bridegroom,” with emphasis on relationships between women (my witchy heroine’s friendship with her neighbor, her fond memories of the woman she knows as her mother, and her prickly interactions with the spirit of her biological mother through the mirror). After a couple of drafts, the producers of this year’s ARTC DragonCon show deemed it performance-worthy, but when I asked for volunteers to direct the piece, no one spoke up. (“We all want to be in it!” another friend explained.) So I took a chance and offered to direct it myself, even though I’d never directed an ARTC play before. Once the cast was set and rehearsals started, I began to wonder why I’d waited so long to volunteer. Since I’d written the play, I already knew just how I wanted it to sound, but I learned how to work with my friends in order to make it happen, and the result was nothing less than magical, thanks to a marvelous cast and Foley team. I was reminded, yet again, of why I love writing for the Atlanta Radio Theatre Company and why I will continue to do so as long as I’m capable of holding a pen.

My second success came when I gained the permission and blessing of Life University’s Dean of the College of Graduate and Undergraduate Studies to arrange an ARTC performance on Life’s campus. This time, since I’d procured the venue, I took the reins as producer, and on December 6, we performed a holiday-themed show that included two scripts I’d penned at the beginning of the year. The first, The Legend of La Befana, comes from a bit of holiday folklore I first learned at EPCOT in Disney World; it tells the origin story of Italy’s female gift-giver, who once hosted the three Wise Men at her home and turned down their invitation to accompany them to see the Christ Child, only to change her mind and chase after them. The second is an adaptation of a Victorian Christmas ghost story, Entertaining the Stranger; in this one, a young lady mourning the death of her father hopes she’ll meet a ghost on her visit to her aunt’s ancient manor on Christmas Eve, but soon learns she should be careful what she wishes for. Our audience that night may not have been as big as that at DragonCon, but they responded warmly to our efforts, and the Dean let me know she would love to have ARTC return to campus for another performance. That was the proverbial cherry on top.

When I pray about my creative work, I always say, “Let it come to mean something to someone besides me one day.” My work with ARTC has shown me I don’t have to be a best-selling novelist for that to happen. Enjoy this recording of December 6’s show.