Hello everyone!

Sorry about the space between entries, but I've been enjoying the holidays before buckling down for the new year.

Found out the my story, "Cheerleader Revelations," will be appearing in the February issue of Neverary online magazine. It's nice to start 2004 off with a fiction sale. Now, to crack one of the pro markets this year . . .

Since everyone seems to be listing off goals for 2004, I'll add mine:

Fiction Goals:

Well, I've decided that I'm going to finish two novels this year and get those in the mail. I want to get the feel for this whole novel writing thing and hope to increase my production to three in 2005. Also, I want to write at least twenty new short stories this year. While the idea of writing a novel is thrilling to me, I'll always love the short form. Writing short stories to me is sheer joy. I'm usually sitting behind my keyboard and giggling like a madman the whole time. And really, what more can you ask from your work?

Other goals:

Try to establish a sense of financial stability this year. I'm horrible with money, and it's time I started planning better and being more concerned with my long term financial future. You know, get caught up on bills, that sort of thing?

Also, I need to lose another fifty pounds this year. I went from 301 this year to 248 and I want to hit 190 or so by the time this year is over. All I have to say is I love Atkins. I don't think I could survive any other diet.

That, and this year I firmly intend to get my wife pregnant, damn it. We want a baby. It's time.

I've had the hardest time coming to grips with this one. I have a daughter from my first marraige. She doesn't like me, has never really liked me and as the universe would so have it, we've spent no more time that two or three months of her eighteen years on this planet together. Her mother took her away from me at an early age and convinced me that the best thing I could do for my daughter was to stay out of her life and to allow her to grow up with my ex-wife's new husband as her father figure. She did a good job convincing me that I had no place in my daughter's life. It's been very difficult for me to accept the thought of having children with my sunshine for just this reason. Somewhere in the back of my mind I was convinced that my new child would be taken from me too.

You can't live with past failures haunting your future. It just doesn't work. So this year, I want to start a family with my lovely wife. There's no one else I've ever met who I love so much.

It's time. Time to bury the past hurt and give future joy a chance.

Joseph Haines, signing off from The Edge of the Abyss.