Having my baby in May forced me to take a small hiatus, but when I came back to the blog, armed with my new laptop, I came back into writing in full swing. I had new story ideas coming out of my ears (at least, that's what it felt like). I started a new novella series "Crow" and began tackling the final rewrite of my fantasy novel "Firechild". I made some pretty significant progress on both. I'm still very proud of the amount of work I got done this year. It may not seem like a lot to some writers, especially those who are able to write every day for several hours undisturbed, but considering I was doing it with a newborn and a wild, energetic toddler I think I did pretty damn good.
In late August I stumbled upon a blog post from Joe Konrath ("A Newbie's Guide to Publishing") where he issued a challenge for people to write, edit, format, create a cover and upload / publish a book in 8 hours (one work day I suppose.) I managed to get mine written in one day but the other steps, which were new to me (and I had to wait a few days for my cover) took me about a week. I published my first "Story-in-a-week" the beginning of September on Amazon's digital book platform.
At this point, things were looking up. I was writing just about every day and making progress on all of my projects. I had gone through the e-book publishing process, had created an Amazon Author page and was finally on Goodreads. It would figure, all these good things would crash down on me in the most ridiculous way. Yes, I'm talking about the laptop / toddler mishap. It completely derailed my entire plan that I had been working so hard on all year. The laptop is completely destroyed and it will take me some time to be able to afford a replacement. I was able to get the work off the hard-drive at least, so all my writing for the past year is not lost.
The loss of my little muse, my furry familiar Delilah, at the beginning of this month added a whole new level of depression. If you are an animal lover you will probably understand. My fur-baby (because, let's be honest, before my husband and I started having kids, our kitties WERE our kids) had been in my life for the past 8 years. She was six months old when my husband and I started seeing each other. She escaped out into the hallway of our apartment building one evening, sneaking out the door behind a guest who wasn't paying attention. Apparently half of our neighbors saw her in the hallway but no one can tell us for certain what became of her, though someone suggested that one of the neighbors put her outside (it has snowed like 4 times since then - which only made my anxiety worse because she's an indoor cat 100%).
We searched everywhere - sent emails to all our neighbors, put up signs all over the neighborhood, checked shelters, ran out in the middle of the night every time someone called us with a possible tip. And then there was the jackhole in our building (we still don't know who) who went about sabotaging our efforts to find her - tearing down all our missing cat signs and leaving us a nasty note Christmas Eve morning that read "Not going to be Found!!!" (Yep, some people are that cruel). It is also highly possible that this mean-spirited individual has kept our cat and just doesn't want to give her back but we don't know for certain. It has been a heartbreaking month for the entire family. After a month of searching, we finally decided that, if we couldn't have our Delilah, we would open our home to some other kitties in need. I adopted two young cats over this past weekend - Elora and Willow (yeah, like the movie, but our Willow is a girl). I can't properly express how much having them here has lifted my spirits.
I received my first payout from Amazon for "Imaginary Self - A Short Story
" a few days ago. It wasn't much (at 99 cents a pop I only get 35 cents per book) but it was still nice to get my first official pay as an author. Definitely motivated me to get back to work!And that, in summary, is 2013. Tomorrow is New Years Eve - I don't normally do "resolutions" but what I will do is post my intentions for the next year (because, you know no one ever actually DOES their resolutions. Last year my list included most of what I actually accomplished this past year so I think I'm pretty safe to make new ones ha!)
My ambitions for 2014:
- I intend to kick off 2014 by picking a project (I'm considering either going back to Firechild or getting more into the Crow stories) and brainstorming ideas before I begin. I'm waiting on my new laptop, which I'll likely get in February or March before I can really get down to the writing part.
- I hope to finally finish organizing and putting together my "writing room" in our apartment, which, for the last 2 1/2 years, has been more of a ginormous closet space. Hopefully, having a set place to work in will help keep me organized and working regularly.
- AND (drumroll please.....) I intend to write, edit and publish at least two books this year. I know, my ambitions are growing wildly out of proportion, but I think, with all I learned this last year, that it may actually be achievable.
That's it for today. I hope you all have a wonderful New Years and I'll check you again in 2014!
