January 3, 2012

It's good to be alive and (almost) 55

Ah, 2012. It still sounds weird to my ears, in that way new years always do until I get used to them.

Looking back on 2011, in terms of accomplishment, it was definitely one of my better years.  I changed my eating habits and dropped enough weight to fit into single-digit-size jeans...and I'm keeping it off. I finally got a good portion of my garage cleaned out, courtesy of warmer-than-usual temperatures through year's end. I started an exercise routine. And I bit the bullet (or, perhaps more appropriately, swallowed the prep) and underwent that colonoscopy I've been putting off for nine years.

On the writing front, I found a writer's software package that I simply adore (Scrivener for Windows). I finally completed and ePublished a storyline that first formed in my head back in 2006, when I saw a report on NBC News about the bounty of jobs in North Dakota while unemployment elsewhere soared. That gave me the basic plotline for an interracial romance, but a basic plotline does not make a book. It didn't all come together until about a year ago, shortly after I'd published The Heat of Heat and was trying to decide which project to work on next.

Now on to 2012. God willing, I'll celebrate my 55th birthday in six months (usually smack dab in the middle of the year, but this being a Leap Year, the first day of the second half of the year). I'm looking forward to shopping during special senior days and picking up that extra 10% to 15%, and ordering off the 55+ menu in restaurants!

Not only is A Kiss of A Different Color completed and selling briskly (with low-key promotion that didn't involve making a pest of myself on Facebook), to mostly favorable reviews (the first review I received was just 1-star, followed by mostly 4's and 5's), but less than three months later I am now completing a new eBook, which I may have up for sale as early as by the end of this month (you can read an excerpt of Isn't She Lovely? here). From there it is on to a mainstream project I'm very excited about, which will be my first project done entirely with the Scrivener software. My goal is to have it done by the fall.

Will I make it? I don't know. But I'm sure going to give it my all!

Wishing you all the best in 2012!  What do you hope to accomplish this year?