To my Readers, to my Colleagues, to my Friends:
Today I say farewell to the year that nearly killed me. Over the course of January, I will be posting (rather a lot) about just how it tried to do that. Much of this year has been an agony of sorrow and uncertainty. Never before have I been so eager to say goodbye and good riddance to a year.
And yet. This is also the year that gave me my first self-published, for-sale collection of stories. This is the year that gave me a mailing list full of people I am so glad to have at my side. This is the year that gave me a shop and a tumblr and a renewed sense of creative purpose and energy. How can I regret a year like that?
To all those who stood by me this year, in little ways and big: thank you.
Thank you for feeding me dinner when I hadn’t eaten all day. Thank you for leaving comments (or trying to) when I had technical difficulties on the site. Thank you for playing and working with me on forums as I learned how best to serve my craft. Thank you for writing me poems and answering my questions and reblogging my photos. Thank you for showing me, in my tiny, sometimes isolated life, there is affection and loyalty and hope.
I believe I can only go up from here.
I have big plans for 2014. Team Hotel ‘verse will get more stories written and published, including a book-length collection. One of those will be (I hope) available in a print edition along with the usual electronic formats. Writing will happen alongside moving and remodeling and learning my way around a new county (see January for the full story of that). So I will be busy and stressed, but it will be work and play I choose for myself, and I will do it with joy.
I hope to see you around in the new year. I hope you enjoy what I have planned as much as I do. I hope to hold onto you, the best that 2013 had to offer me, even as I move on from the worst it could dish out.
With hope and against all odds, I remain sincerely,