So the turn of the year was a very eventful period for me. The week before Christmas had my son down to visit from his school-year home with his mother in Montreal, QC. I hadn’t really seen him beyond MMORPGs, Facebook and a couple of phone calls. Long Distance/ Instant Messenger -isn’t- as good as being there. I miss him, and I’m doing my best for him, but it’s hard. However, it is the arrangement he felt would work best, so I’m okay with it.
The same period also saw the release of my first novel, “The Sauder Diaries – By Any Other Name”. It is a Steampunk pirate adventure romance novel which took me about 4 or 5 months to write in my spare time. At this point, it’s been on sale in eBook format for less than two weeks. It is already getting rave reviews from readers on Amazon.com and Goodreads.com. On Christmas Eve it was #35 in the “Amazon Top 100 New Epic Fiction”… everyone above me was an established author with two or three books, or two or three series, and their book had been listed with Amazon for more than a month. I was astonished.
Since then, it is in the top 200 Steampunk-releated books on Amazon.com. I’ve been interviewed on a few book-reader blog sites. I’ve even gotten an inquiry about when the paperback edition from a minor-legend status indie bookstore near Atlanta, Georgia. Wow. Just… wow.
JKL5 is doing well, but essentially running quietly. The customers for the Persony conference hosting servers I manage are happy. The telephony side of things is still quiet, with most of my large accounts in spending freezes until some time next year. I’ve hired an accountant to work with me to get things sorted out for the books. Cash flow is stupidly spikey, but ultimately the company is profitable. So that’s cool.
New Year’s Eve was spend with friends from Montreal, and my son. We had a wonderful time of talking, laughing, enjoying good drink and silly stories. It was a very warm way to close out such a tumultuous year, 2011.
New Year’s Day was spent with family from four generations in a marvelous celebration of a very French style of life. 23 of us, total. Lots of food, lots of wine, even more laughter and talk. The coffee, tea, dessert, and of course card games, rounded it out.
Boot-stomping French folk/ coastal music was playing upstairs, lunch was served at 2pm, dessert was served at 4pm and we had seconds for supper at 8pm. The card games lasted until well into the next morning. It is moments like those that I realize how blessed I am to have such an extraordinary group of people as my kin.
So, tomorrow, I am on the road again, heading home to my life in Charlottetown, PEI. My wonderful lady-wife will be waiting to meet me, and I’ll get my New Year’s kiss.
After that, 2012 stretches out ahead of us both as potentially a very adventuresome year. I’m really looking forward to it. 2012; Year of the Dragon. Here we go!
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