Personalized Year In Review …

By all appearances, I took 2011 by storm.  January 1st my debut novel Sedition came out.  Six months later Witch-Born hit the eBook market.  And then, obviously, Saboteur ended my year of publication just this month.  That’s three novels out in one year.  As I said before, no one should live at that speed.  It’s been dizzying and wonderful all at once.

But, aside from flicking books out into the market, I made progress on some new works.  I’m still polishing Deviation, but I hope to release that book by myself as a free podiobook.  For those of you who prefer to read it for yourselves, I will release it through various other venues as well, but right now my focus is on how to get it read and audio-edited.  Also, I created Nellis V — a planet of my own design, meant to host my alien-abduction story.  I even started writing on Nellis V during NaNoWriMo this year, though I completely failed to reach 50,000 words in 30 days.

But the big Work In Progress is Dead Magic, which will be the sequel to Witch-Born.  And, now that I’m tallying things up, I can see that I am more than halfway through the work.  I should have it finished by mid-April, shot out to my Alpha Readers by May 1st, and then edited by the end of June.  It is under contract with Witch-Born‘s publisher — Double Dragon Publishing, so as soon as I’ve made it as pretty as I can manage, I’ll submit it.  It will likely not come out until 2013 — Sorry, Witch-Born fans, I’m working as fast as I can.

I wrote my first short story this year!  It will be coming out in an anthology sometime in 2012, and I will be alongside some very talented writers.  I am super-humbled and happy about this short story — The Man Who Loved Medusa — and can’t wait to see it in there.  I’m also stoked that I managed to write something less than 90,000 words long.  I really didn’t know if I could.

But then I wrote my second short story, which you can find on THIS SITE FOR FREE.  It’s right up there in the top bar called ‘A Family Matter’ and delves into the characters of the Sedition/Saboteur world.

Outside of writing, I moved across town into a new apartment with big windows — still love them — and bought a new (used) car.  I know I told myself I would climb three mountains, but I only managed to climb two.  However, given that I also started school, I think we can make my first semester a metaphorical mountain.  (Current GPA is 3.9, by the way.  That last class was terrifying and I maintain that the left side of my brain is permanently scarred by the Final.)

So!  All in all, 2011 was an excellent year for me.  I am continually blessed in all things.  My son will turn 4 at the beginning of January and I look forward to another adventurous, ambitious, and wonderful year in 2012.