My Year in Review - 2017 (pt. 1)

A little over a year ago—Dec. 7, 2016 to be exact—my life changed. That day, my spouse and I moved into a new house after relocating from Texas to Alaska. Cross-country moves like that are not easy, and it had been a hell of a day.

Moving sucks. I think that’s universal. But it seemed like we’d been putting out fires all day (broken down cars, snow, a lot of furniture and appliances damaged in the move). I was stressed and anxious about living half a country away from literally everyone we knew, and it was really cold outside. (Newsflash, Alaska’s cold, y’all.)

That evening, the editorial director at Riptide Publishing called to inform me they wanted Controlled Burn. I was in shock. My husband cried. It was awesome. And that was just the beginning.

The year to come was exciting, crazy, hard, sometimes lonely, and sometimes full of so much beauty that it didn’t seem real. But the biggest change was my new writing career.

Released my debut, Controlled Burn, on August 14, 2017.
Released Life on Pause on October 30, 2017.
Riptide has also contracted the sequel to Life on Pause, which should come out in the spring of 2018.
And they’ve contracted the sequel to Controlled Burn, which should come out in August 2018.

This year—2017—was a strange year to jump into publishing with both feet, and I definitely made mistakes and learned a lot. I’m thankful for the opportunities I’ve received and I’m looking forward to 2018.

Here are my writing/publishing goals for 2018:

Contract at least one more book to come out in 2018.
Pivot my career slightly to include m/f and f/f romance. (I have a tiny home romance that’s been percolating for months that I plan to start ASAP).
Begin the agent search.
Cultivate an in-person writing community. I haven’t talked about it a lot, but online interactions really trigger social anxiety for me in a way that doesn’t happen in person. So, I’ve realized that if I want to find a supportive writing community, I’ve got to leave my house and find one.
Find more/reliable beta readers

Living in Alaska was also lots of fun (I’ll drop some pics at the end of the post), so here is just a taste of the cool stuff I did:

Saw a ton of moose, including several at my back window, which always scares the shit out of me.
Rode a train to Denali National Park with my parents.
Saw some bears from a very far and safe distance.
Attended the Women’s March in whiteout blizzard conditions.
Saw a lot of whales on a day tour in Resurrection Bay.
Stayed overnight at the coziest cabin in Denali State Park, where I wrote some of the sequel to Life on Pause.
Snowshoed in -15F.
Saw the aurora borealis from my own backyard.
Shoveled a ton of snow, and was very grumpy about it.

And last but not least my resolutions/goals for next year: