On Friday I took a retrospective look at last year’s new year’s resolve—and promised to return today with some thoughts on my goals and challenges for 2015.

I caught up with some friends today where we discussed this very topic and one of the important resolutions for all of us was to try and improve work-life balance. This is a big one for me, because the last five years have felt like an unending grind of earthquakes, the aftermath of living in a majorly damaged city, while continuing to slog away on the books, first The Gathering Of The Lost and then Daughter Of Blood, that had been set back by the whole natural disaster experience.

I think work-life balance is something you have to work at every day, but one way in which you can “diary it in” is to at least book a holiday every year—and take it, too, regardless of whether the work is slogging away or not. So that is Resolve No. 1: to book that holiday and take it, too.

2015 will also be the year when the insurance repairs to the earthquake damage on our house should at least start, if not be finished. (These things are currently taking a long time due to too many repairs/rebuilds and shortages of skilled tradespeople etc.) In our case it’s going to be a big job and so my resolve is to get over any heavy ground as lightly as possible. I also thought it might be fun to blog it—my own personal Year Of Living Heroically, a la Amanda Arista’s blog series on the Supernatural Underground, which I listed as one of my “favourites” from 2014.  But more on that, specifically, tomorrow.

I’d also like 2015 to be a Year Of Living Fictionally, firstly and most importantly by starting work on The Wall Of Night, Book Four—and wow, even typing those words for the fourth and final book in the WALL series is an amazing feeling. Sure, it’s contemplating the beginning of another journey, but also the last leg of a greater one, and challenging or not, that is Really Exciting.

But as well as writing WALL 4, I am keen to get Daughter Of Blood through Production as expeditiously as possible—at least the parts where I have input—and also to have a wee bit more of a focus on Helen Lowe Fiction generally on the blog this year: so watch this space & we’ll see what transpires. 😉

So there you have it, 2015 as the Year Of:

Work-Life Balance—and a Holiday, just like the ones real folk take…

Living Heroically, Amanda Arista-style, in relation to the earthquake repair of my house; and

Living Fictionally, through my work, here on the blog and Otherwhere as opportunity arises.

And may your 2015’s also be full of Balance, Heroism, and Fiction.