I think it might finally be that time, Gentle Readers....

New year, new start -- isn't that the way things are supposed to go?  For the first time in my life (nigh on 45 years now) my urge to start, change, adjust, and freshen up has coincided with the start of a new calendar year.  Usually September is where I 'feel' the start of a new year, but here I sit, perched on the Grand Beginning in the month of January.

My daughter turned 16 last week, and my mother turned 70 a couple of days before that. Perhaps this desire to restart and begin at the beginning is related to that. Perhaps not.

In any event, here's the general sitch, my Dear Readers. In no particular order the following is going to happen over the coming weeks, some faster than others, some in the next day or so.

My website (www.chrisowen.net) will be coming down and a temporary landing page will go up while I build my new look.  I will also be taking down a lot of stuff that's been free-floating in hidden links for the last 15 years, so things like fanfiction links from yesteryear will vanish. I hope to have a new site up within a short time, a couple of weeks at most. I need to sort out my hosting and see what I can do about certain images.

Also!  Since last summer I've been letting short stories fall off contract, so a few (very old) titles are currently unavailable. These have all been around for years and I'm sure you're all sick to death of them cluttering up the internet. ;-)  I'll be letting more come off as we go, and then creating reissues or an anthology with some new content. I'm not sure yet; I don't want people to have to re-buy old stories to get new, so I may just make an anthology of the old things so it's easy for new readers to locate the back list. It's all nebulous right now, but the point is that old things are going away, but will come back, and there will be new stories this year.

Also this year will be the launch of a new series. This is huge for me (and hopefully for you) as it's a whole new area and story arc. I've talked about it a little on twitter, so if you're there and have been paying attention, yes. This is the spy stories.  This will come out late in the year, but hopefully not before the snow returns to my neck of the world. Again. Since it's still here. Falling as we speak.

I loath snow. Just for the record.

Let's see, what else?  Um, I'm back to authoring full time, that's new. No day job at all, so I've gone from three jobs to just one, and holy cow does that feel good.

So, to sum up:  Website going, then coming back. Stories going then coming back. New stories. Hate snow.

How are you?