Books published in 2016

Earlier today, I saw an old meme I had shared on Facebook about how I should believe that “good things are on the way” for 2016. I saw that, shook my head and rolled my eyes. “How very wrong that was,” I muttered to myself. Yeah, I was hopeful that this new year was going to be a good one. Better than the last, at least. But it wasn't.

Well, no one in my immediate family died this year, thankfully, but some relatives did pass away. One of my aunts was among them. The year 2016 just ended up being a crappy year. And of course a lot of us are not going to forget the large amount of celebrity deaths that happened this year, either! Seriously, it was like more celebrities died this year than usual. I normally don’t care about celebrities or celebrity news and I’m not the kind of person who goes crazy over any ONE celebrity. But I DID notice this happening. I did see the pattern. There were a lot of celebrity deaths in 2016. Some people started calling 2016 “The Year of Death.” Indeed, it was that, for a lot of people – and not just celebrities! (One of my cousins also died this year, too.) Some people saw this year as a way to prepare for Armageddon – and this warning was often followed up with the comment that it would strike on January 20, 2017.

But, yeah, on a serious note, 2016 wasn’t really a good year. There’s just so much bad stuff that happened this year.

So I am not surprised I didn’t get many books out this year, either. I did plan to self-publish two children’s books, but I was sick for the entire month preceding the pub date of one of them, so I could not get it out in time. I just bumped it to next year.

So there was just one children’s book that was published this year. That book was God’s Birds. You can read the story behind the story here.

The second book published this year was released by my publisher, Gypsy Shadow Publishing. That book was Burning the Midnight Oil Revisited. You can read the story behind the story of this book here.

I did try to get the new version of the haunted houses book out this year, but, oh my God, it has been a NIGHTMARE trying to self-publish this book through Createspace. I have never, ever run into the kind of formatting problems and obstacles of self-publishing a book with CS as I have with this one. (One of the problems I have had? They would not review the ENTIRE 577-page file I submitted for review. Only like 35 pages of it – and they approved THAT! Uh, no!) So it has just taken me so much work to get it formatted the way THEY want it and get everything right with it. I am STILL working on that! But if this one last attempt fails, I will have to look elsewhere for affordable self-publishing. The good news is that the new file is shorter.

I am really excited about the prospect of getting this book out. It will happen someday soon, I hope! Martha and I worked very hard on updating this book and adding new material, and I know it’s even better than the first one.

Another thing I could not do this year was finish writing my YA novel. Writing this novel is NOT easy! There is so much limited research on this topic and I’m doing the best I can to construct a realistic story based on what little research I have been able to gather on this topic. But I know I will finish writing this novel soon.

And while I also could not finish writing one poetry book, I DID complete work on another poetry book. That book was Seasonal Songs. You can read about the story behind the story of this book here.

I hope that next year will be better. I am not going to predict what books I will get out next year, only that I hope the number will be higher than this year. That would be nice. It would be VERY nice if I manage to get all the books out that I hope to get out for next year, but we will see.

And I wasn’t able to get a new writing job this year, either – or ANY new job, really! – but I’ll keep trying.