The Year In Review: 2012

Last blog post of the year, and traditionally a lot of bloggers and publishers produce a "State of the Nation" speech, a summary of the ups and downs of the year. I didn't do one last year, mostly as no one was really reading my blog (is anyone actually reading it now?) but I did a similar thing with one of those legendary "family newsletters" that I used to put in Christmas cards to everyone.

However, this year was so bad that I haven't bothered doing a newsletter - it would have been so depressing and miserable that it would have been a miserable read and not what people would want to read at what is traditionally a cheery time of the year.

So what has happened this year when it comes to my writing?

The year began a little lost. I was in between writing jobs - a situation I'd put myself in by turning down writing opportunities for the last year while I worked on the Unlocked webseries with my former video production partners, Cheesemint. I'd had the thought that producing comedy was the way to go, writing something funny that everyone could enjoy. While the original series of Unlocked went down well and was screened at GenCon Indy 2011, things kinda fell apart and I found myself alone (with the wife and cat) and at a particularly low state.

I managed to get myself a little writing job covering the release of Marvel's "The Avengers" (or "Avengers Assembled" as it was called in the UK) for Forces of Geek, heading to London to see an advance screening of the film, and then attending the UK Press Conference, being in the same room as Robert Downey Jr, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Tom Hiddleston, etc. An amazing opportunity, and a fantastic couple of days (see the full post here).

But even then, the universe wanted to keep me down, with my mother being taken ill the very evening of the Avengers press screening. While she was being rushed into hospital, my phone was turned off and I was miles away, unaware of what was happening.

My summer was dominated with taking every opportunity to travel back to my hometown to visit mum in hospital, and then in the care home where she was placed, but she never really recovered from that night, and she died early in August.

The rest of the year was taken up with recovering a little, and the day-job in retail as it built up to Christmas and the usual madness that entails.

So, yes. Not a good year.

It wasn't all bad.

Conspiracy X 2.0 returned to life thanks to Kickstarter. The three supplements for the game were successfully backed and two out of the three are already in glorious shiny hardcover form.

The supplements for Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space started seeing print, the amazing Defending the Earth (UNIT sourcebook) is now in hardcopy as well as PDF, and the Time Traveller's Companion has just launched as PDF with a print version in the new year.

And I successfully finished my NaNoWriMo novel that set the scene for the WILD RPG.

WILD seems to be the place for me to put my sadness, frustrations and setbacks aside. And hopefully, the game will be all I hope it will be - a game of dreams, where you can explore the mind, the unconscious, to visit impossible realms, to do the amazing and not just kill your way through bad guys. The world is harsh enough without games of death and destruction. Sure WILD can be used to play action, and violence, but I hope the game will be something more.

Hopefully, WILD will be closer to publication next year. Maybe even finished. I hope to Kickstart it, but I want the game to be actually finished before I try to do that - that way, there won't be the traditional 6-12 month wait between paying for a game and for it to actually come through the letterbox.

With the novel already done (probably needing a rewrite/edit) there's already a bonus incentive, and then there's the cards to work on...

It has become a very personal project for me, and I just hope that when you do finally see it, that it is everything I hoped and dreamed it would be.

Let's hope 2013 is a better one, for everyone.