The Writing Year in Review

It’s been an interesting twelve months. I was offered a publishing contract in March for the first book in my Casey Holland series, The Opposite of Dark, and spent a total of three months working with two terrific editors. My free copies arrive next month and then the real work of promoting steps up. When I wasn’t working on this book, I edited the second and third books in the series, which I’ve been working on for quite some time, and started the first draft of book four. Finally—hopefully permanently—I broke free of salaried employment to live life as a full time writer. So, it’s been a great year for creativity, though not so much for finances, but there you go—this is a writer’s life, unless you're John Grisham, or James Patterson, or Stephen King. My publisher put the cover and pre-ordering info about The Opposite of Dark on amazon, which you can find at http://tinyurl.com/2frw58u

Meanwhile, here are a couple of cool things to take a look at. First, Darcia Helle’s holiday book giveaway event, which I mentioned a month ago, ends on December 31st . So far, about 600 people have signed up, so if you want a chance to get a free book by an indie authors, go to http://www.quietfurybooks.com/holidayevent.html

The always informative January Magazine has prepared a number of different “best of” book lists for the year. The one for crime fiction is in two parts. Some of the names on the list are familiar, but others aren’t. You can find part one at http://tinyurl.com/26rpfvd and the other at http://tinyurl.com/27y9m68. They’ve also compiled a list of best cookbooks, best fiction and nonfiction, plus art and culture books which are also worth checking out. So, happy reading, and all the best for the new year!