happy new year

Yes, that time of year again.  Twelve months have passed, incredible in their speed!  To consider all that has occurred in this past year, dude!  Dude pretty much covers it, from going indie to battling goiters.  Let's not forget Thea's engagement and graduation, Bud also finishing college.  Jay and Bud moved home, then Jay moved out, and as this year ends Bob's feeling pretty good.  Well, right now he's in bed, so I imagine he's feeling drowsy, if not outright asleep.

Goiters and writing went hand in hand this year, but at the end, writing trumps!  (Take that you over-enlarged thyroid!)  But it wasn't just about writing.  2011 will linger for what occurred after the novel had been written and revised within an inch of its life; publication.  This year I published four novels.

I wrote nine drafts while formatting and editing those four indie manuscripts.  It's been a year of work and goiters, hummingbirds and kids, so many beautiful moments outweighing the slightly dodgy ones; I won't easily set aside fleeing the doctor's office when Bob's neck was prodded (expect something similar in a book one day).  Equally I can't forget the night I published A Right Turn At Jesus, all my kids save Thea in this not so large house as that novel went live.  Thea and I instant messaged, so even she was present.  It takes a village, or my similarly far-flung and wide family, to get this action off the ground.  My family figured heavily this year, partly due to my dad's ill health, but just the notion of how short life really is.  It's not long at all, so why not just do it?

Why not publish some books, write some more?  Why not write a few blogs (oh goodness!), why not take some trips (and come up with more book ideas), why not visit The National Mall or Alabama or SoCal, enjoying parts of American never before encountered.  Why not just let it all hang out and put novels online, why not just watch my beloved San Francisco 49ers go 12-3 for the first time in over a decade, like since 1997?  Why not I say, why not?

Why not look past what's expected, go above and beyond the call of duty?  2011 was a year of why not?  Why not just feed some hummingbirds and see what happens?  (They come back and want more!)  Why not release a novel, then another, then another (They seem to accumulate like the blasted h'birds!).  Why not write some music reviews, considering all the tunes I listen to? (Much different writing non-fiction, let me tell you!) Why not get that goiter out of Bob? (So Anna doesn't have to listen to the snorkling and snuffling anymore...)

Ahem, well, yes.  But as that goiter was kicked to the curb, so were expectations, usual assumptions.  Indie publishing is still odd to most, as in why not just do what's expected of you, unpublished and amateur author?  Well, why NOT publish independently?  Why should novels sit silently in hard drives or tucked in dark spaces?  Let the river run, I say, or rather Carly Simon sings.  Blast that song and see where you sit afterwards.  Whether it's how to publish or grappling with an uncooperative manuscript (not to mention a bothersome thyroid); what's holding you back, keeping you down?  What's tying hands behind your back or limiting your creativity?  We all have stumbling blocks, goodness knows nobody's immune from writer's slumps, dark spaces where nothing seems right or focused.  This year was a parallel of wondrous achievement slapped right alongside incredible fear; was Bob going to make it out of surgery all right?  Is my dad's health going to spiral south?  So far Dad is feeling no cancerous symptoms, and Bob?  Bob is planning on his trek when he rolls out of bed.  Now his legs hinder him, all that oxygen propelling him faster than his lower half can manage!  It's been one hell of a year, if I might say so.  But ultimately, good overcame the darker days, and on the last day of the year, I'm feeling fine, wonderful, wanting to shout from the rooftops; why not?

Maybe it's age, hitting my middle forties.  Maybe it's with kids really on their own, my life is again about me, Bob, hummingbirds, words.  The last two are new-ish in the big scheme, and while Bob's at work (or trekking the mountain) what about me?  Time is fleeting, also abundant.  The words are too.  More words than sense I often say, but here it is, sitting in my lap.  Type type typing more days than not, for some reason that has been building as every year passes.  Five years ago I spent this day in Yorkshire, England, aware it was my last in the UK.  Last New Year's Eve, last year there in all probability.  But it was my first as a writer, 100K of Drop The Gauntlet safe in a laptop.  In 2007 I was here in California, three more novels added to that initial foray.  2008 piled a few more, 2009 plopped a heft onto the pile.  In 2010 I had over thirty manuscripts, wondering what came next.  In 2011, I found that answer.  It had a little to do with goiters, but mostly about liberation.  As of today, four novels are available, in addition to Drop The Gauntlet; dude!

Dude indeed!  Whatever 2012 brings, may it be all you could desire.  And for the bumpy bits, well, at the end of the day even a coup-plotting thyroid was a part of the mystery.  Let the new year guide you to pleasures and thrills, peace and joy.  Now I'm off for a cuppa, and to feed those buzzing hummingbirds.  Bob's neck is clear, but those birds, oi!  I'm coming, I'm coming...