As 2014 draws to a close, I thought it was time to take a little look back over the last twelve months. This year was the one when I finally stopped dreaming and started pushing my stories out into the wider world, when I stopped hesitating and procrastinating and became an indie author for real. It’s been interesting and stressful at times, but fun and educational too, and I am genuinely thankful for many things. Two Aekhartain collections and two free novellas sadly don’t appear by magic and though I mostly write in my isolated Ima-cave these days, there are one or two people who have helped me along the way.
So let’s get started.
Thank you, Lynn E. O’Connacht, for listening to my inane rambles, reading my first drafts, chuckling at corpsicles and cork seals, and doing your absolute best to wrangle my bad punctuation into some readable form. You’re a trooper and the shiniest of stars, even in the face of extreme provocation, and without your support I’d probably not have published anything.
Thanks also to my other Talechasing friends, for beta reading, cheer leading, drabble support, plenty of emails and comments and the general youness that makes each of you special and so much fun to know. You’ve stuck with the Aekhartain for a good few years now, I just hope I can retell their stories to your satisfaction. I promise Ree and Blitz, Zao and Rai are coming, not to mention Nawa, Issie and lots more Mero. I might even break out the oreads.
Thank you to everyone who downloaded free copies of Sing to Me or Be With Me. I am genuinely astonished at how many people have downloaded copies of these books. I know they’re free, but the fact that something about them caught your attention and made you want to know more will forever delight me.
Huge thanks to anyone who has written a review for me this year. Firstly I’m so happy you read my book, and secondly I am so grateful that you’ve taken time to post a review about it. Your words genuinely mean the world to me.
Last, and most definitely not least, to everyone who bought a copy of Orion’s Kiss or Unbound and Free, thank you so much. I’m just a boringly ordinary person living a dull and unexciting life in which I also happen to write stories. I’ve been telling them for several years now, but mostly kept them to myself. To know that they’re out in the wider world where people are choosing to buy them kind of staggers me really. I really hope you enjoy them and that they might make you smile, and that perhaps you’ll even want to come back and find out more about them. Thank you for helping make my dream of being an author feel a bit more real.
So, I guess that was 2014. Break out the celebratory beverage of your choice, count down the final seconds, raise that glass and know that you have been thanked, my friends. Farewell 2014, hello 2015! May it be better for every single one of you than the last one was.
Hope and happiness to you all.
Becca Lusher 