This must be the blog post for simultaneously looking backwards and forwards; the last days of 2011, the cusp of 2012.

2011 was a pretty good year. I finally realized my lifelong dream of getting published. It didn’t happen like I’d been visualizing for years. There were no publishers competing to sign me. There was no six figure advance. There’s currently no movie in the works. Strangely enough, after trying for so long to get an agent…and finally getting one, I ended up breaking off that relationship so I could self-publish unencumbered.

It’s a new world for the author, and one must embrace change. As they say – a bend in the road isn’t the end of the road, unless you fail to make the turn.

But it’s okay. My agent said my first book pegged me as an historical fantasy writer and that must be my focus for awhile. I didn’t much like that box; and now I don’t have to follow that rule. And that made me realize I didn’t like a lot of the “rules” of the old publishing model. I can write and publish whatever I want. The agents and publishers are no longer the gatekeepers. The readers now have that role.

So, that takes me to my brief message at the end of the year. If you haven’t already done so, make this the year you find yourself. Finish that book, take those last three classes to get your degree, learn that foreign language, take up that hobby you’ve been putting off. Do what makes you happy. Think the “rules” will hold you back? Actually, not so much as you think. As Morpheus says in the Matrix, some rules can be bent, some can be broken.