Looking Back at 2017: New books, new baby, new job

If anyone were to use this blog as a way to keep up with me and my well-being, they'd genuinely have reason to ask "Did something happen to him?" Well, here I am raising my hand saying "I'm still here. I'm OK." (Coincidentally, Pearl Jam's Alive is playing on Spotify right now.)

And, truthfully, if you judge my year based on the posts live on the blog right now it looks bad. But reality is that you're missing a few dozen from January to June. I serially published a book here at the beginning of the year but had to take those posts down to make the book part of the Kindle Unlimited program. I'm a very, very small fish in Amazon's very, very big pond, but I didn't want to get sideways with the 800-pound gorilla of the book publishing industry.

NEW BOOKS

That book, by the way, Rubble and Ruin: Welcome to the End, is by far my most successful publication to date. It's sold about 150 copies so far, and it's been read by about as many Kindle Unlimited readers. I've made twice as much from that one book as I've made from everything else.

Rubble and Ruin was my only book published in 2017, but it was one of three books written this year. I've also written the follow-up, the next part of Mac and Caroline's story. It's been edited, I just need to take another pass through it and it should be ready for publication in January. 

There's also a book, the first in a series, about the crew of a space station that's edited and ready to go. And I'm about 10,000 words into a space adventure story about a group of freelance pirates and their semi-sentient ship. It's a fun story so far. I think you'll like it. Both of these should publish in the first part of 2018. I have a plan for next year, but I'll write more about that in another post.

NEW BABY

On a personal note, our family of four became a family of five this year. And I became a little less outnumbered. We welcomed a son, Liam, to the family in mid-November. He's amazing so far, but I think all of my kids are. His sisters love him more than I thought they could. They are great with him. Mom is ecstatic. So is dad. Gina and I had always talked about having three kids, but actually having a third was something we wrestled with. We have two absolutely perfect girls. Were we pushing our luck trying to have one more? We decided that we didn't care. We've always seen our version of the Rush family as a party of five, and we trusted God. So we went for it, and I'm glad we did. Liam feels like he was the last piece of our puzzle. We're complete now. 

NEW JOB

Because life wasn't chaotic enough with the holidays and a new baby, I left my job of almost four years and started a new one the week before Christmas. It's an amazing opportunity to combine everything I've done in my career so far into one job. I won't bore you with too many details, but I'm essentially getting to start a trade publication for a sector of the healthcare industry. I'm having to pull on some rusty journalism levers, and that's fun to do again. But I'm also taking some of the marketing tricks and tactics I've learned over the last six years to both bring readers and to build email lists that we can then eventually monetize. It's still very new, but it's also a lot of fun. I'm getting to envision what this publication actually looks like and how it operates. So, all of those things that I've suggested clients try over the last few years I can actually put into place. So I'll either prove myself a genius or a fool.

I think that's it. I've been gone a while from here, but I think I've got you all caught up now. Quickly, if you were one of the people who bought Rubble and Ruin, thanks. That book has been a fun ride so far. And like I mentioned briefly above, I've got some plans for 2018. Plans that I think are doable assuming life doesn't throw me some unexpected curve balls. I'll share those later this week or early next.

Until then, have a blessed end to 2017 and a wonderful start to 2018.