2022 was A LOT.
To finish out the year, Mark and I both have the virus.
As the last wave subsided in late summer, we slowly allowed ourselves to get back to normal, even if we took it slow, still wearing masks indoors, except when it was quiet enough in the cafe or restaurant we were visiting.
And eventually giving them up altogether in restaurants, because, hey, at 5 PM they’re deserted anyway, right?
Until this last week, when holiday-goers packed those same places, even in the early evening, and the rise in local cases finally caught up with us.
But the real action in the health department landed smack in the middle of the year. On June 30th, the day before BayCon, my bike slipped out from under me on a ride to see a friend for coffee, and I flew fifteen feet through the air to slam into the sidewalk.
In my orthopedic surgeon’s words, “it’s like your humerus basically exploded.” Which, take my word for it, was not humorous at all.
With the emergency room doctor’s permission, we went to BayCon anyhow, which in retrospect was absolutely insane, but seemed necessary at the time.
Being at a con again for the first time in three years was amazing, even if the whole broken-arm thing did put a bit of a damper on it. I got to meet a bunch of author folks I’d only known online. I sold some books – yay! – and I met Steven at Water Dragon Publishing.
Water Dragon is a small, LGBTQ friendly spec fic press that impressed me immediately with its array of titles, its commitment to face-to-face events, and Steven’s enthusiasm for the genre. He and I talked a bit, and next thing I knew, I was submitting the first book in my upcoming trilogy to him, The Dragon Eater.
The world carried us on a whirlwind ride in 2022, with the shocking decision striking down Roe v. Wade sending a shock wave through the world. If Roe could be discarded, who’s to say the court wouldn’t do the same thing to marriage equality?
A bipartisan majority in Congress and President Biden, that’s who. And although the Respect for Marriage Act isn’t everything we’d hoped for – for instance, although it wouldn’t stop states from repealing marriage equality if the Supreme Court were to allow it, the new law would force them to recognize same sex marriages performed in other states.
Sometimes you have to take what you can get.
And in an election that promised to wipe out the Democratic party in this country for a generation, somehow the narrow loss of the House doesn’t seem quite so bad.
What about my writing?
Sometimes it seems like I have always been working on the Tharassas Cycle. I started on it just before the pandemic, writing the first book in early 2020 as the virus crossed the ocean and descended on our unsuspecting country.
The book grew and then split into two, on the advice of my editor, who surprised me by telling me that not only had I written a YA novel, but it was basically the first two of three acts, and I just needed to pen the final one.
But that’s not how it ended up at all. It’s now four books, the first of which is due for release in March. I’m in the final stages of reworking the last two books in the series, and soon will work on something new.
I can’t wait to write something new.
And now?
We’re suspended in the space between fall and winter, hoping for the warmth of spring – it’s been freaky cold out, even for a Sacramento winter, with most days not even hitting fifty degrees.
Business is slow, as if the cold weather has sent everyone into hibernation.
And with the virus, it’s like we’ve slipped back in time, to those awful, early days of the pandemic, when we couldn’t leave the house and wondered if we’d ever lead normal lives again.
And so we wait for things to change. For the weather to shift. For a new direction to suggest itself, so we can feel hope again. So we can find a way forward out of the gloom.
My arm is healing. The virus is slowly losing its grip on me. And a project I’ve been working on for three years is finally coming to fruition.
Maybe, just maybe, things are about to get better.
How was your year? What seeds did you sow that you are hoping take root in 2023?