If 2015 was a Year of Waiting; I’m declaring 2016 a Year of Moving Forward. Insomuch as it depends upon me, I will work hard this year to increase my writing output, my exposure with my readership (via social media and in person at a variety of events), my sales numbers, and my skill-set as a writer. If I finish writing CLONE in a timely fashion, I’m looking forward to diversifying my portfolio by moving on to my next project or projects before the year is over. I’m hesitant to say what it will be at this time, because you never know what twists and turns the publishing industry will take from month to month, but two things are certain: a good story is always in fashion, and creative marketing can go a long way.
 
Looking forward at my schedule for the next few months, I have three speaking engagements scheduled for Feb-March so far, ranging from the very informal to the very formal. Then I take off for Los Angeles on March 30th for four days to attend the Association of Writing Professionals conference and the Literary Classics award ceremony. It’s looking to be a good spring for professional advancement!
 
And now… well, now I’m pretty sleep-deprived, but that means I’m working on things as I should be. I wrote about 2,500 words on CLONE this weekend after many weeks of no work at all due to the holidays and illness. But when I start writing, I stop sleeping. I have terrible insomnia when I really get going on a project, but that just spurs me on to write faster so I can finish and sleep. I should cross 10,000 words tonight - a drop in the bucket, really, considering my manuscripts usually exceed 100,000, but every book has to start somewhere.
 
With hard work, I’m hoping that 2016 will be not just a Year of Moving Forward, but also a year where I see real growth in my audience and many more Firsts than I had in 2015. With all of your support, I’m sure I can get there! And don’t forget to subscribe for my newsletter for exclusive content. When I reach 100 subscribers, those subscribers will receive an exclusive sneak peek of CRIMINAL!

2015 closes out the first year in seven years I haven't released a new book. So, as a professional author, that's a first for me, and not one I like. I'm tempted to view this as a failure, but I can't allow myself to do that because, as much as we like to divide our lives into nice yearly bundles (Happy New Year, everybody!), time just keeps rolling on. I released BREEDER mid-December 2014 to get it in before the Christmas rush, and just three months after the release of The Bone Whistle. If I had chosen to wait three weeks longer, it would have been released in 2015 and I could have had my nice, tidy "one-new-book-a-year" record intact. Instead I published two books in 2014 and no books in 2015. Oh well. We all make choices.

So I tried - really hard - to write CRIMINAL in a timely-enough fashion to submit it to the publisher for editing to get it published in 2015 to maintain my record and make sure you all got your sequel when I'd promised it, but... you see, I'd also had a baby in 2014, a fourth baby, and so I was managing a newborn, and a toddler, and a kindergartner, and a second-grader, and... my writing process slowed way, way down. I wrote CRIMINAL in 2015, and I turned it in, but not in nearly as record time as I'm usually able to manage things. It took me months, not weeks, to write that book. That was also a first for me. And so in regard to that manuscript, I'm still waiting to hear what my editing schedule will look like and when the release date will be.

2015 was also a year of exciting firsts, though! I received interest for the first time from a movie director and producer. Early in the year I received an e-mail inquiry about the film rights to BREEDER. A few e-mails were exchanged, and then he said he would get back to me after the Sundance Film Festival and that was the last I heard. At this point I feel confident he probably lost interest in me, but it was still an exciting first contact to make! I also received the first inquiry into foreign rights for The Six. Again, e-mails were exchanged, and I'm not sure if anything is going to come of it (waiting, waiting). I started up my first regular author newsletter (you should subscribe!) and merged my old blog and website (huzzah!). And most exciting, of course, I won my first two awards from Literary Classics International Book Awards and Reviews in 2015: the Seal of Approval and the Silver Award for YA Science Fiction for BREEDER.

If 2015 taught me anything as an author, it taught me that this career is full of surprises and frustrations. Well, to be fair, I already knew both of these things, but they were reaffirmed in bigger and (sometimes) better ways this past year. My year of firsts has led to much waiting as well, both on my part, and on your part as you wait for a sequel that was promised in 2015. All I can do is thank you for your reader loyalty to me and for your forbearance and promise you that CRIMINAL is coming and 2016 will be the year in which I write CLONE. Onwards and Upwards!