Baby Steps

Hello again from myself, Mrs. Winter, and Baby New Year... lol. I have to come up with a cute nickname for him.

As you can see, this is another annual blog post. One of these years it'll go back to quarterly, or possibly even monthly when I can get the Harbinger audiobook out and the third novel released. But needless to say I haven't had much time to write this year.

My day job has been quite stressful in these already tumultuous times of intense change. The strain on my mind and body did not help when I've already been sleep deprived and stretched thin with our bouncing baby boy. But don't get me wrong, my family are wonderful and worth everything and all the time I can spend with them. If I found a different financial stream (hint, hint, buy my books), I would quit that place in 24 hours.

A lot of life isn't in your control, but life in general is defined by what choices you make when they're presented to you. This being election season, I'll invoke the dreaded comparison of "lesser of two evils". And voting of any kind often feels like that. Sometimes a choice isn't worth making, and the best move is to just not vote at all. But that has to be very well calculated. I vote for 100% of primary races and north of 90% of general election candidates and ballot measures (California). Anyway, I digress...

My point is that you will make poor choices in your life sometimes, and you may make hard choices, but making a choice at all is almost always better than strategic inaction because you chose, you acted upon the world, and so when given a vote or given a choice, take advantage of those opportunities as much as possible.

So when I had a thousand little choices of how to spend my time and where to place my energy, I always chose my family, because those were easy choices worth making. Work stuff was mostly beyond my control, and the few mistakes I did make, I feel I was punished for far more than I deserved. But sometimes you have to bite your tongue, strategic inaction, because I have a wife and baby boy, I'm not going to jeopardize my career and primary source of income to get a few more rhetorical pounds of flesh in a debate I can only lose anyway.

This probably sounds rambling to an outside reader, but you can probably understand now why I honestly haven't made much progress on anything since 2025. Most of my time rightly went in to making sure our little man's first year was the best that I was capable of giving him. Then we had several stressful periods with family health scares and week-long illnesses across the board. And then the remaining time and energy I had was burned out of me by a Byzantine, Trial-like, Kafka-esq, Brazil-ified (the movie not the country, but also maybe), bureaucratic, blown-out-of-proportion, storm in a teacup. It was honestly the most psychological stress I've felt since before I was engaged to my beautiful wife.

But at least all that mental manure is going to be fertile soil for future storytelling... lol.

Our big, strong little man is starting to take his first steps, and I have still had chances to take baby steps here and there on several stories. Many of them were circumstantial and often therapeutic. I'd have a scene idea drop into my head, and so I wrote it out on that associated google doc just to splash in that oasis of creativity on my journey through the creative Sahara. I was even able to get a few more chapters of the Harbinger audiobook edited!

No promises on any upcoming release windows or schedules yet. That largely depends on the machinations of the people above my paygrade, including the Almighty.

At least the spiritual trials led us to our new church home as a family. My son was baptized and we became members of a WELS Confessional Lutheran congregation, where we possibly hope to send him to school one day. Readers can probably infer a lot about my faith journey over the years, unpacking beliefs and theology from the churches and schools of my childhood and early adulthood. It seems like many modern young Christians are seeking the "high church", including Anglicanism, Catholicism, and Orthodoxy. I've been feeling at home in the Wisconsin Synod for similar reasons, although my view of salvation is probably more charitable than all of those, assuming a creedal baseline (Apostolic, Nicene, & Athanasian). But that's not ultimately up to me.

So this last year has played out as many of my past years have, when we are experiencing times of great joy and blessing, times of intense devotion and dutiful requirements, that's when the devil comes. I think we all end up living lives like Job, just to differing degrees. Few reach his level of righteousness before God, but those that try even a little bit suffer trials in equal measure in attempts to stifle their progress.

While I wasn't meant to have accomplished as much as Frank Winter over this last year, I accomplished what I wanted to for my wonderful wife and son, and I would never choose anything else when given that choice.

Thank you again for those who do read and do follow. Please spread my books around to those who may even be nominally interested. I hope to have more before this time next year... but that's in the Lord's hands as much as my own.

- Frank