This year has been incredible. In the 10 years since my first sale, 2015 was the first time I openly referred to myself as an author. Before that, it felt sort of weird, like I was some wanna-be pretending I was something that I wasn’t.  Even after Dämoren released in 2014, I was apprehensive about throwing that title out because I remembered some opinion piece that said to be called an author, one must have two published book.  It’s silly, I know, but I was never able to really put my chin up high, walk up to a total stranger and say, “I’m an author,” until this year.

Hounacier was released in March with a wonderful reception. I’d been very nervous about it because it was so drastically different than Dämoren. But for the most part, readers have loved the sequel.

After years of close calls and false starts, the Black Raven made his literary return with Mountain of Daggers in March and Sea of Quills in September.  Reception has been mixed, but most readers appear to enjoy it.  We always knew it was going to be a niche-market, but Black Raven is my baby.  They’re my popcorn adventure fiction and I couldn’t be more proud to have him out there.

Dämoren was an Audie Finalist for Best Paranormal Audiobook.  It was my first major award nomination and while we lost to M.R. Carey’s The Girl With All the Gifts, I’m honored that my little debut got to rub elbows with so many great works. I got to go to my first award ceremony and meet R.C. Bray in person.  He’s now narrated four of my books, and I’m terribly proud to get to work with a narrator of his caliber, and he’s also a great guy, which makes it even better.

My first anthology release in five years happened with The Serpent’s Army.  I have two more coming in 2016.

I gave my first Guest Author presentation at All-Con 2015, soon followed by FenCon 2015 and the TCC Library.  Evidently those went very well because I was contacted by the DFW Witers Conference and asked to come speak as a Guest Author for 2016.  It’s a huge honor. The last time I attended the conference I was an unpublished author desperate to sell Dämoren. 

I enjoyed many great books this year. In fact, I read more in 2015 than in any other year.  My favorites include:

The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch. I loved this series so much that I have a blog about it.

The Girl With All The Gifts by M.R. Carey. After losing the Audie to it, I had to check it out.  Great book.  It’s also the only book told in Present Tense that I didn’t find distracting or awkward. 

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. Fantastic and fun book. The audiobook was read by Wil Wheaton, who not only gave a perfect performance, but was beautifully appropriate as the narrator of the greatest nerd-culture book I’ve ever found.

The Martian by Andy Weir.  Absolutely lived up to the hype.  And while my opinion of R.C. Bray might seem biased, believe me when I say that he absolutely killed it with this performance. Awesome audio book.

The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris.  I listened to the audiobook read by the late, great Frank Muller.  Muller was hands-down my favorite narrator ever and I picked this book up just as much for him as I did in my interest in the novel itself.  As someone who has seen the movie-version uncounted times, I was amazed to see how wonderful the source material was.  Highly recommend it.

In addition to book releases and a ton of reading, I wrote Ibenus.  While we’ll have a lot of editing and polishing to do, it feels so good to finally have that story out of my head.

With one novel release, two short story releases (and a likely third that I’m just waiting on the contract for), and Ragnarok’s recent distribution deal, 2016 is poised to be another great year.

Thank you, everyone, for you support.  May you all have a healthy and prosperous New Year.