Well, 2016 is finally over, which supposedly means that celebrities will stop dying. That’s good. Of course, it also means that 2017 has arrived in its place and that some racist, sexist, Twitter troll ass-clown is going to do his best to roll back the country to the 1950s. Can’t say I’m looking forward to that, America.

I was going to do great, wonderful things over the holidays. Legendary things. Things that future generations would commemorate with scholarly books and countrywide parades, perhaps. Instead, I battled the Worst Motherfucking Cold Ever, capitalized because it deserves my gods-damned respect, as I became one with the couch and the couch became one with me. For nearly two weeks. Two weeks, this cold! I say again, two weeks!

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That ain’t right. That’s too long for any cold to hang around, especially one with the power to render its subject useless. I basically looked like the Two-Weeks Girl from Total Recall seconds before she exploded all over the place, hashtag spoiler. The result is that I didn’t do any of the following legendary things: finish Sophistication; work on Sophistication; write anything meaningful; play video games; consume any media worth consumption. I did, however, consume an endless surplus of fatty foods. Does that count? I was one with the chocolate chip cookies, and the chocolate chip cookies were one with me.

Does this update have a point? Listen, you’re asking the wrong guy. I just write this shit.

Right. So all of this to say, I think, that with 2017 here and a Trump-led cannibalistic nuclear fallout apocalypse all but confirmed for the first half of the year, I need to start in. People, that clock, it is a-tickin’. It’s hard to know how many more words I’ll need to tell the story of Sophistication. I have no idea what’s yet to come, to be honest. These characters are deplorable assholes. But I’ll shoot for 100,000 words and I’ll probably hit it, give (and then take) 50,000 words. The plan is to wrap the book by the end of February, but I should note that I hate plans and often plan against them.

Oh, Dead Weight is nearly profitable after two weeks. Well, depending on my measurement. If I simply account for the money I sunk into it, which includes the cost of the cover, the audiobook, and what limited marketing I’ve done so far, yes, I’m in good shape. Of course, this doesn’t account for the years spent creating it, so there’s that. Years that really should’ve been months, except Game of Thrones was on, or somebody brought over a bottle of Booker’s, or The Last Guardian finally came out. That’s not true — The Last Guardian came out well after I finished the book, but you get the point.

Anyway, I think that’s it.