2009 in a Nutshell

I've already broken one of my resolutions, the one about blogging more often. Thing is -- and I've said this before -- when writing takes up the majority of my working day, the last thing I want to do in my free time is more writing.

I had these grandiose plans to do a really bang-up Year In Review for 2009, with a month by month summary of accomplishments and injuries suffered, with appropriate and/or ironic pictures with accompanying smartass captions. But I haven't made the time for that, so I'll just fire this out there shotgun-style.

2009 -- The Broad Strokes

Professional

I write three new feature-length projects: Grandmother Clock (dark children's fantasy), which was immediately optioned; Belly of the Beast (horror set on a 19th-century whaling ship), which immediately went nowhere; and JourneyQuest (fantasy/comedy web-released feature), which I'm directing in March.

The artwork for the Fred, Prince of Darkness pitch package comes in.

I write a webseries pilot, Earth Force 5, which Epic Level produces; it immediately bombs.

Cindi Rice and I pitch 21 geek-humor short films to G4 to use as bumper material; we might get to make some of those sometime this year.

Epic Level submits Pwned to Jim Henson Studios. They really like it -- they've never done a romantic comedy before -- but would like to see a rewrite. They promise to send detailed notes. Still eagerly awaiting those notes.

Anthem Pictures gets The Gamers: Dorkness Rising onto Netflix view-on-demand. The first week of release, it averages 1,000+ new views a day.

History of Demons, which I co-wrote with Nathan Atkinson, comes about two weeks away from full financing. Several months later, it remains about two weeks away from financing.

Ben invites me to partner with himself and Kat Ogden to create a new media production company, Zombie Orpheus Entertainment. He hires me to do the world building and write the scripts Strowlers, the flagship project (previously called Cascadia). We decide that JourneyQuest is the perfect project to launch the company. In the course of a week, JQ goes from just an idea to fully financed. We hold auditions in the twilight of the year.

Personal

We move to Glendale and wind up two blocks away from a Zankou Chicken.

A close family member admits to a lifetime of alcoholism. I spend March in Washington helping get him into rehab, and stick around to help the family adjust during his absence. Extensive group therapy reveals the part I played in it all. My personal mythology about the history of my family permanently changes.

I become a member of the most open, welcoming Lutheran church I've ever encountered. For the first time in years, I'm part of a choir again -- an excellent choir.

My sister earns her degree in nursing and graduates near the top of her class from Hawaii Pacific University. We spend a week in Oahu helping her celebrate.

My parents move to Istanbul, where my father now teaches music at an international school. I fly home to help pack up the house I grew up in. For the first time in twenty years, I don't have a home base in Tacoma.

My grandfather dies at the age of 91. The family gathers -- including my expatriate parents -- to pay their respects. My 83-year-old grandmother makes plans to sell the family farm.

Camille and I have had enough of Los Angeles. We decide to move back to Washington and buy a house in Tacoma. We find the perfect house on Dec. 29. On Dec. 30, we get the financing in order, and on Dec. 31, we're ready to make an offer -- only to discover a real estate investor had sniped the house out on Dec. 29. Ah, well.

I realize that with my sister in Hawaii and my parents in Turkey, I'm the only member of my nuclear family left on the continent.