First Post of the New Year

I had a really good New Year's Eve. I went to see friends in the big city, and we went shopping and ate a very good dinner (at a department store restaurant -- I hadn't seen one of those since I was a kid) and got home with only minor traffic weirdness. Then we watched movies until midnight, heard some fireworks, and that was about it. Of course, I woke up at 7:30 in the morning because I always wake up at 7:30 in the morning.

Last year was a really interesting year. It started out very slowly, as the third official year of my career crash (though the crash actually started in 2005-2006 or thereabouts, and took until 2008 to really be apparent). I had finished two books in 2009, The Serpent Sea (the sequel to the then unsold The Cloud Roads) and a fantasy YA that's still making the rounds of publishers now. In 2010, even knowing that the only solution to a career crash is to keep writing, I was very depressed and having trouble doing that. (I have depression so I'm nearly always depressed to some degree, but I can usually keep it in check. But in the past three years it hasn't been easy.) I started three books, one of which I'm co-writing with a friend, and started a bunch of short stories that all died on the vine, but didn't finish anything. And with great reluctance and a lot of despair I set a date to pack it in and find another job, if something didn't sell. (I looked seriously at the personal trainer classes my gym teaches periodically. It was something I liked to do and I didn't think I'd suck at it.)

Then in the summer wonderful agent arcaedia who never gave up sold The Cloud Roads and The Serpent Sea. Now I'm happy and still in shock and consumed with anxiety, and trying to remember what all you do when your book comes out. (Really, it's been so long since I've had to think about this it's like exploring a foreign country. Someone posted about getting the Publishers Weekly review for her debut novel and it dawned on me that my book was going to be reviewed too (hopefully) and I should keep an eye out for that.)

I still haven't finished anything, between revision and copyedits for The Cloud Roads and being consumed with anxiety, but the third Cloud Roads book is close to halfway finished, the co-written YA is probably about halfway finished, and the new fantasy is languishing in chapter two but I like where it's going.

So that's the state of me. I still have a lot of anxiety about this coming year, if the book will do well enough, if no disasters occur before or during its release, if, if, if. But I feel like I'm in a much better place. :knock on wood:

I hope all of you guys have a better year, too!