A is for Adversity

Sometimes people look at what I've accomplished in the last two and half years and they think, wow you've really had it easy. Wow all you have to do is breathe and you get what you want. Wow, everyone really loves you. But let me assure you, nothing could be further from the truth.

First of all I'm fast approaching my 38th birthday and NOTHING has been handed to me. I've worked my tuckus off to get it. Now I will allow that when I was fast approaching my 36th year on this planet I had something of revelation. I went to digicon put on by Savvy Authors. And suddenly every lesson every taught to me become crystal clear as if someone had given me the decoder ring. I received my first contract and in then my second. In the July of that year I went to my first scifi con and met my second publisher and who would eventually become my third. I have won some awards in the process too. And attend more cons and had my first print book published.

But as a writer my adversity has come from the world outside of publishing. I have faced the typical variety, oh so you're a writer so what, variety from people I desperately want validation from. But I've also faced the more cutting variety. Poverty, which, until recently, has kept travel to a minimum. Abuse as a child, which I won't go too much into, but suffice it to say, things that have been said and done to me which should make me a much angrier and bitter person than I am. And in some cases I'm pretty sure I shouldn't even be alive. And then there's the mental illness which I cope with on a day to day basis. There's the bipolar disorder, the anxiety, and myriad of many other problems to mention.

The blatant disrespect I get on a daily basis is another form of adversity. If I can weather all of that I feel like I can enjoy the fruits of my long struggle at finally breaking through in the publishing world.