{"id":1820,"date":"2022-12-31T15:43:31","date_gmt":"2022-12-31T20:43:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/?p=1820"},"modified":"2023-01-02T10:22:50","modified_gmt":"2023-01-02T15:22:50","slug":"2022-in-review-meh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/2022-in-review-meh\/","title":{"rendered":"2022 in Review: Meh"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Image by Rosy – The world is worth thousands of pictures from Pixabay<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This year, man. It broke my heart.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

2022 started off so incredibly well with the Stoker<\/a> and Ladies of Horror Fiction nominations<\/a> and a short story acceptance, and then somewhere around late July it made like the Hindenburg exploded and fell on the Titanic just before it struck the iceberg.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Obviously, I am forever thrilled to be a Stoker-nominated writer. That\u2019s something 2022 cannot take away from me, even if I never did get my nominee certificate.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And Tidepool<\/i> was a successful debut novel by any metric. It sold well. It was nominated for major awards. It was well-reviewed. It got a Notable Novel listing in Ellen Datlow\u2019s The Best Horror of the Year, Vol. 14<\/i>. It was translated into a gorgeous Spanish edition. I never dreamed my weird little book would get all that. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But people keep asking me my least-favorite question: When is your next book coming out<\/a>? And the answer is \u201cI\u2019m trying<\/i>, OK?\u201d If I was under any illusion that having a successful debut novel and a Stoker nomination would make my work more attractive to publishers and agents, I got my answer pretty decisively: Ha ha, no.<\/i> It\u2019s been humbling. Maybe I needed to be humbled.<\/p>\n

I have The Keeper of the Key<\/i> on submission to a few different places. I\u2019m hoping one of them will take it, but I\u2019ve had no word yet. The waiting is the hardest part, as the song says.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Also on submission: The Shadow Dancers of Brixton Hill<\/i>, a novella I wrote in the spring and absolutely love. Unfortunately, the publishers I\u2019ve submitted it to so far didn\u2019t love it the way I do. I\u2019m hoping to find one that will, but I\u2019m still waiting.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m really grateful for the success I\u2019ve had, but I don\u2019t want to be leaning on Tidepool<\/i> forever. It seems like I always have more success with sales and other writing achievements in odd-numbered years, so I\u2019m very much hoping that trend continues in 2023. But we\u2019ll see.<\/p>\n

And personally, 2022 was a shitstorm. I don\u2019t want to get into too much about this because a lot of it is not my story to tell, but it\u2019s been a long, hard, painful holiday season for several reasons. And these issues are unlikely to resolve any time soon. It\u2019s been very hard to keep my focus and write new things while all this has been happening.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So there it is. I won\u2019t be sorry to see 2022 in the rearview mirror. May 2023 leave us all in a better place than we were when it first found us.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This year, man. It broke my heart.\u00a0 2022 started off so incredibly well with the Stoker and Ladies of Horror…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[110,44,101,61,4],"tags":[22,38,21,39,5],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1820"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1820"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1820\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1822,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1820\/revisions\/1822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}