2012 - Where Did It Go?

As 2012 comes to a close I guess I can have a look back on the year and if it was any good in the end?

The year started with a lot of potential. I had just published the Last Mask - Tradition on Kindle, excited about the potential of the novel. A publisher was interested in my Grindle game, and to see it develop more. And I was writing a short film script for a new director who wanted something similar to my Last Mask novel, learning how to squeeze a story into 10 minutes. So the year looked promising at that point, maybe things were going to improve this year.

Moving on a month later and things had quickly changed. The publisher was no longer interested in the game after I spent a month expanding and improving it. Apparently it now had too much in it, which was interesting. The director decided to not use my script in the end, after I did several edits, but I will just think of that as an experience at writing a film script, and maybe something will happen in films with other people in the future. And despite getting some great reviews, from people I didn't know, my novel hadn't done much on Kindle

A couple of months into the year and the potential of 2012 had seemed to return to the usual situation of nothing. The Last Mask failed to get past the first stage of the Amazon Breakout awards despite me believing it was better than a previous entry of mine that had advanced. I released my YA pirate novel on Kindle a few months later but sales of that were worse than the Last Mask, and even after giving 300 copies away it still has no reviews. 

So what do you do? There really didn't seem to be much point of committing another year to a novel if hardly anyone was interested in reading it. I continued plugging away at the art, but also with little interest from the people who might actually pay me to do it, and social media seemed to be getting less sociable. But enough about all this negative fun, was there anything positive to the year?

I did manage to win a competition this year, for a fan art version of a Summoner War's card, which will be out next year maybe. I also decided to start this Blog and build a new website to put all my work together, and show the world of Winterflood. I believe the website turned out well, and I don't know if anyone is visiting it but feel it is a quality display of the various things I can do. The purchase of an iPad also got me back into playing board games, and opened my eyes to all the different types of games available, and gave me a few ideas of my own.

As the year draws to a close I have now got back into game programming, currently working on a big project for 2013. So as the new year approaches maybe there is potential again, and maybe that potential may quickly vanish. Hopefully I will also self-publish the Last Mask in paperback, and there is still a chance that I will return to it next year and finish the other books. I remain positive  for what I am doing, and optimistic that this can be big, if I avoid people who just want to waste my time, as that is a commodity in short supply .

I also discovered while watching the Olymipic opening ceremony, as it shared a lot of my vision, that I am not weird but just British. So here is to more Britishness from me next year.

And on that note I end this short review of my year wishing that 2013 will be a bit more lucky than the previous ones, and that you all have a great one also.