End of the World, You Say?

Hello, 2012. Very nice to meet you.

2011 fucking sucked. Up there with 2008 for years that just were murder. Again, just happy as hell to see the ass end of it.

I mean, yeah, it wasn’t all awful. I got to meet Kyle Cassidy in the flesh for the first time and he did me the honor of taking some of the best photos of me that I have ever seen. That alone is worth an enormous pile of gratitude.

But I feel like I spent most of 2011 regretting things. I don’t want that to happen ever again, if I can at all help it. It’s not a way to live.

Aside from finishing the Alice Assassin series, the occasional snapshot and being invited to be the wedding photographer for dear friends, I did no new photography last year and that above all else…hurts. Not that finishing Alice was anything to sneeze at. But I couldn’t justify the expense of another heavy production shoot. As most of you know, I am a set heavy/prop heavy/theatrical photographer. It’s how I itch my filmmaking scratchiness without resorting to total film insanity. And last year I did not get to indulge in it to my full delight.

Oh, I have ideas. Glorious, glorious ideas. But none of it saw the light of day. And I don’t know when they will. 2012 is already booked and it’s not even the 4th. I’m still editing photos, so that’s something. It’s just not enough.

And painting, well. I finished the covers for Dark Lightning and Broken Rainbow. I was smashed in the head with the idea for a new one. I’m not going to push for more than that, because like the photography, my time just dwindled in 2011.

The press, however, continues to make huge bloody strides. In a year of awful, it was the shining, gleaming thing of wonder and I am so grateful for it. This year, the press kept *me* going, not the other way around. We published two calendars and six books. Which is HUGE. 2012, we’re going to publish twelve books hopefully, and hopefully another calendar. That’s nothing to sneeze at.

The girls continue to grow and become the most amazing and astonishing of creatures. I just cling for dear life on the ride.

I did write a screenplay for the first time in years and I wrote another novel. 2011 it felt like routine. So right there, time to push the envelope. I don’t ever want this to feel like routine. I’ve fought too hard for this life of the writer. It’s too precious to treat like routine.

So in spite of too many deaths and too much sorrow and health scares and drama, much was accomplished.

Hello, 2012. Let’s go.

Originally published at Angela N. Hunt. You can comment here or there.