It’s so weird to realize it’s 2023! As a history buff, I think back to 1923 and what was happening about then. In my family, my grandparents were having my aunt and uncles. In a few more years it would be my mother and then on the other side, my father. How weird that in a few years, my parents would have been (had they lived) 100 years old! I did the math the other day and they would have (had they stayed married and not divorced) been together 66 years! Lots of history and reflections there!
Myself, I’m looking back at the last year or two and grateful I’m here, I’m writing about it, and I’m alive! As those of you who have followed my blog know, I’ve had a few health concerns. I won’t go into them here, you can scroll back or put into the search engine for this blog about my health and find them. All I can say right now is, I’m okay. Not perfect of course, but I’m coping and I’m optimistic about the future. I’m slowly pulling myself out of the huge hole I dug due to my health. It will take time and patience, lord knows I don’t have a lot of patience, but apparently, the fates are giving me the time.
Those of you who follow this blog know I cranked out a LOT of foreign language books this past year. I still have a few I need to blog about, but I lack motivation. I’m kind of burned out on it all. The same with the audiobooks I’ve been producing the past few years along with some terrific narrators. I just don’t want to do all the work involved in it all anymore. I’m writing, but not enough to produce a novella or a novel. I just don’t feel like it anymore. It’s not writer’s block, it’s a sincere lack of motivation to do it these days. Part of it is the meds I am taking, part of it is the time of year, and part of it I don’t know exactly. Meanwhile, I just keep plodding along, hoping to get back to the insane obsessive compulsion that helped me produce the 100’s of books that I have over the last decade or so. The stories are still there, and I’ll write a paragraph here and there, but I can’t sit down and over the course of a weekend, write a book anymore. That part depresses me as the stories are in my head, I just can’t concentrate the way I used to. The ‘I don’t wanna’s’ are quite strong. I’m fairly confident that this too will pass. It’s not at all like the brain fog I had a year ago from covid that finally lifted.
We had a very successful season in the Lesfic Bard Awards. If you don’t know this, I started the awards site six years ago. Then, five years ago I started the Gay Scribe Awards. Sadly, the Gay Scribe Awards did not take off like the Lesfic Bard Awards and I’ve made the decision that 2022 is the last year for it. I don’t know if it’s because as a writer and publisher in Lesfic, I knew the niche, or if I just never got the same publicity and traction in the Gay fiction field, but for the amount of work and effort I put into both awards sites, Gay fiction just didn’t respond and I’m not continuing with that. I’ve already taken down the ability to enter from that site. On the Lesfic Bard site, I’ve already updated it for the coming 2023 season and we’re looking for more judges in order to continue with the success and overwhelming applications we have received over there. It’s a nice validation as the amount of effort that was put into these awards is rewarding in itself. The award is breathtakingly beautiful, we chose well there, and the amount of publicity we have garnered for the award and the winners, makes it all worthwhile.
I’m going to sit back today and wait for the next snowstorm we are expecting. As you all may know I live in NorthCentral WisconSIN, the gateway to the ‘Big Woods’ and they get a lot of snow here! We were lucky to miss most of the big one that socked in most of the USA, it went south of us. We did get the polar vortex, but that’s usual around here, just our January weather coming in December, so no big deal. Still, this author/publisher/promoter would like to someday move to warmer climates!
Follow along as I share my journey with you, whether it’s publishing a new book, a new audiobook, a foreign language book, or whatever my creative mind can come up with. Thank you all for listening/reading and following along.
K’Anne
K'Anne Meinel 