First I must thank Rich Keller whose very special blog post carried me through the second half of December, a month that ended on a sad note. My mom, age 97, developed a serious case of pneumonia complicated by severe sepsis. She passed away on December 27th.

It seems every year of our lives is a mixture of the good and the bad, but that is the human condition. I am blessed by the number of caring people who made my mother’s last days comfortable, and those who have comforted me since.

But life goes on, and a new year calls us with a promise of change, challenge, and choice. I have big changes ahead of me: all that time I used to spend with or for my mother is now open for other pursuits so I need to make wise choices; I have a historical mystery, Wishing Caswell Dead, scheduled for release from Five Star in November 2017 which will be a challenge to promote in new ways; and I will turn 75 years old, which does make one stop and think about priorities.

I hope that all of you have survived your 2016 challenges and are ready for change in 2017. Change (whether personal or global) is inevitable, and fighting change will only bring pain and despair. Our goal should be to guide change. We can do that in a thousand ways, but let’s get our efforts off social media and do the work where it will actually do some good.

I wish you all great blessings, great joy, and great success in 2017.