Thank you, 2015!

It’s really amazing how much can change in the course of a year! Last year at this time, I was two weeks into recovery mode from a major surgery, and I was feeling beaten down by a year of nothing but bad news. I was just a few months out from having to leave my job and struggling to accept the news that due to my health problems I was likely never going to be able to teach again, and wondering what I was going to do with myself or if I was going to wind up on the streets.

But I made a decision: I had lost one calling, but maybe that would let me follow another one. So I resolved that 2015 was going to be my Year of Writing. I was going to throw everything into making a career of being an author.

A year ago, I never could have imagined I would wind up in this place. It’s not just the fact that I managed to meet and surpass my writing goals – editing one anthology, contributing to another, planning for a third, and publishing my first novel – it’s the amazing and wonderful people that I met along the way. It started with the friends I made at Write All Year, some of whom became my cabinmates at Camp NaNoWriMo and now some of my favorite writing buddies. Then there was the day in January when I stumbled across some new website called Asexual Artists, and decided to go for it and request an interview. That led to me meeting some of my absolute best friends – fellow aces, fellow writers – and to the creation in April of The Pack of Aces. I’m so happy to have found this wonderful group of people, and so happy that fate threw me into their paths! Every project I’ve worked on, from Perchance to Dream to Wings of Renewal to Fourth World, has introduced me to people that I feel so blessed to know.

I’ve met too many wonderful people this year to list, and that’s an amazing thing to say. Thank you all for being amazing friends, supportive readers, and making 2015 the best year I’ve had in a long, long time. Here’s to 2016!