Ringing in the Year of Baby Bear

That's right, Penna and I decided that 2024 will be the Writing Year of Baby Bear. You may remember that Baby Bear was the nickname Irene Caffrey gave her grandson Neal when he was an infant. In honor of Penna's 10th Anniversary of Caffrey Conversation (October 2023), what better choice could there be? It's a year when we hope to have so many plot ideas, we'll need two names for them—berries for fluffy ideas and cubbies for the angsty ones.

Penna and I have both played with bear analogies throughout the series. In The Woman in Blue, Neal, Peter, and El participated in the Goldilocks con. Neal likes to call Peter a polar bear because of his enthusiasm for cold weather. When Peter's angry, he can turn into a grizzly. Neal's half-brother Henry has also shown ursine tendencies. In The Dreamer, El called Henry a honey bear. That story also featured an encounter with a real bear.

I've enjoyed connecting Peter's love for astronomy with the two bear constellations in the sky—Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, or Baby Bear. Peter and El teasingly refer to each other as Mama and Papa Bear. Now that they have their own baby bear, Neal would gladly surrender the nickname to Danny. But is Danny a baby bear? Does he make rumbling growls when he's unhappy like Neal did? So far, Danny has been off stage, but in 2024 he hopes to make his first appearance.

As to what else is on tap for the upcoming year, predictions can be tricky. This time last year, Penna hadn't planned to write her fluffy White Collar fic Across the Street or 3 stories related to the White Collar finale. I hadn't intended to post the Phoenix cycle of Caffrey Conversation stories or revisit Tales from the Library. But some of my upcoming projects are far enough along to announce.

• Caffrey Conversation: In 2024 The Red Diamonds cycle will come your way with several stories posted monthly.
• Crossed Lines: Bad Omens, posted last July, was the first in a trilogy of works. Pirates of Manhattan (February 2024) and Unholy Alliance (April 2024) will complete the cycle.
• Arkham Files: Chaos Conundrum set the stage for new directions. A couple of crossovers will provide more breadcrumbs. Strange Signals (January 2024) is a fusion fic with Tales from the Library. Slimed (March 2024) lets the Arkham crew reconnect with their friends in Caffrey Conversation.

Penna's plans for the next year include:

• Caffrey Conversation: A story inspired by Ocean's 8 featuring the women of the series.
• A White Collar fic in a fairy tale AU
• Rewriting her original novel as a series of short stories instead. The publishing process simply sounded too exhausting, so rather than adhering to a traditional novel format, Penna plans to send the stories out into the world in smaller pieces. Whether that means posting on Wattpad, Tumblr, or someplace else remains TBD.

At our fall writing retreat, Star Trek themes emerged as Baby Bear's companions. To explore new worlds. To boldly go where we haven't gone before. To find new ways of writing stories we like to read. The new year is fast approaching and we're eager to engage!

Past writing years: 2022: Year of the Giraffe. 2021: Year of the Cat. 2020: Year of the Dragon. 2019: Year of the Penguin.

Related posts:

• More about Baby Bear is in Penna's post Baby Bear: When Characters Talk to Writers
• How the writing years got started and its early history are described in The Year of the Cat
• The challenges of the Year of the Dragon.
• Welcome to the Year of the Dragon
• The First Dragon of the Year
• A Tale of Two Dragons
• Comfort Stories for Stressful Times
• The Dragon Update
• The Year of the Giraffe began with 2022: Ring Out the Old.