Crikey. Here we are at the end of 2015, and it’s been quite the year. This is the year I got my book deal, started my YouTube channel and really began to feel like everything might be coming together at last. Not merely in terms of my dreams coming to fruition but in terms of my mental health and recovery. All my steps have been small but forwards, and that in itself is a vast difference to previous years.
I’m still in a valley of disbelief over the whole book deal thing, after over 3 years of having an agent and striving and the whole almost not subbing ESCAPOLOGY drama. My amazement that my little cyberweird and it’s follow-up have found a home has only been compounded by seeing ESCAPOLOGY in a few blog posts talking about what people are looking forward to reading/seeing in 2016. 0.0 They remind me that it will be an actual book, on actual shelves and being read. It’s monumental! Pretty sure I won’t believe it even when I have the finished book in my sweaty little hands. I am VERY excited and VERY nervous and I cannot wait! Mostly though I’ll be busy writing the sequel and researching the next things I want to write. Nose to the grindstone, what! Because I want this to be the start of a journey and not a one-off (technically two-off because sequel).
Going to show off my gorgeous cover again right here, because I love eet!
My YouTube channel has been another huge surprise. I expected no one to subscribe bar some of my lovely online/RL writer friends and here I am gradually edging toward 500 subscribers (479 as I write this post). WOW. Actual strangers (some of whom are becoming friends) subbing to my rather amatuerish channel to hear me waffle about books and share way too much about my mental health and gradual, ongoing recovery. I could never have predicted it in a million years and it is both delightful and heart-warming. Needless to say, I’ve loved having a channel, it’s a hobby I’ve wanted to start for a few years and I look forward to continuing (hopefully a touch less amateurishly) in 2016.
And here’s today’s video, my last bookish video until the 8th of Jan (there’ll be a MHM one up tomorrow)!
Finally we come to the elephant in the room (for me, it’s been stood there my entire life) – my mental health. This year as I said, it’s been all forward progress. Tiny steps for sure, and a fair few dark days, but I have never felt like I was in danger of truly going backwards like I have in previous years. I sit here in a house I have finally been making my own after years of feeling too depressed about my situation to bother and with actual routines in place I don’t only keep up for a few weeks then entirely lose track of. It’s miraculous – or it seems so to me, as I did not once imagine I would ever be this well. I never had the kind of hope I have now – that everything *can* change and will continue to improve. I can’t describe how wonderful that is – there are no words adequate.
All in, this year has been one that’s been a long time coming, the one when everything started to change for the better – including me. Thank you 2015, you’ve been SPLENDID. Here’s to 2016 carrying on the trend to even greater and more outstanding heights. Thank you all for coming here and reading this year, and thank you for your likes and your comments and a big old WELCOME to all my new subs – because to yet more of my amazement this blog continues to grow too! I hope to see you all in 2016 as I intend to continue my blogging as well, with a little more poetry and creativity to boot if all goes to plan. See you on the flip side!
Word Bullets 