The New Year: Janus Had It Right

First of all, Happy New Year and best wishes on all your undertakings in 2015! (And if you operate under a different Calendar than mine, best wishes today nonetheless.)

This column was inspired by a marvelous quote I read in the December 2014 issue of O Magazine actually, that really struck me. Oprah was interviewing fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg and asked her how her current success “differed from her first go-round”, when the classic wrap dress she invented was all the rage in the 1970’s. DVF, as she’s known, replied “…What’s different now is that I am in the autumn of my life – if I’m lucky. I’m in maybe the end of September, the October of my life. I have children; I have grandchildren; I’ve had a full life, a full past.”

Since the turning of the New Year can be a look at the past, as well as a time to ponder the future (thank you, ancient Romans and the god Janus), I resonated with this theme. I also happen to love October, which is my birth month and favorite time of the year. Going by DVF’s calendar, I’m edging into that beautiful season too, in some ways. I’ve had the (first and second) career, with ups and downs…have children and one grandchild. Nothing wrong with the beautiful Autumn! As the American poet W. S. Merwin says in his poem The Love of October, “I have been younger in October than in all the months of spring…”  Well me too, WS!

And as Rose G. Kingsley stated  in the 1880’s, "In the garden, Autumn is, indeed the crowning glory of the year, bringing us the fruition of months of thought and care and toil.”

All right then, 2015 will be the start of my Autumn!  Jane Austen, writing in Persuasion, said, “…that season of peculiar and inexhaustible influence on the mind of taste and tenderness--that season which has drawn from every poet worthy of being read some attempt at description, or some lines of feeling.” 

(If Autumn was a place, it would be beautiful Rivendell, in my opinion; as it was in “Fellowship of the Ring.”) I could SO live there...

But you know, as far as being a writer, I’m really only coming into my Summer, which is exciting and invigorating. This January marks three years of being published (thank you, Carina Press, for releasing my Princess of the Nile) and in that relatively short time I’ve had six more books published (plus audiobooks), started writing a column for USA Today Happily Ever After, found a wonderful community of fellow authors, met so many terrific readers, reviewers and bloggers – thank you to EVERYONE who’s read one of my books. I’m so grateful to you!

I guess I’ll announce it officially here – as of March 1^st, I’m leaving the Day Job to become a fulltime  author, which is The Dream, let me tell you, and wouldn’t be possible without YOU, my very much appreciated Readers. I’m so grateful my stories have found an audience!!! (Yes, that does merit three exclamation points, maybe even more.)

Not that I’m making resolutions or anything (because I tend to break those about January 2^nd), but in 2015 I hope to release four books and another audiobook. I’m looking forward to the luxury of writing all day and into the night, taking breaks to feed and play with the Demanding Cats of course…well, the reality being there’s a lot of time that goes into doing social media and writing blogs and going to conferences, all of which is fun and hopefully helps me connect with my Readers. To tell you the truth, I can’t actually write all day, or all night, much less both, not since college days probably, when I lived on some kind of edge – the Muse is temperamental and she likes me to keep my writing in balance with the rest of my life now. But I’m so looking forward to the freedom to write a whole lot more than than I could in any other year.

Wishing you all the happiness and good things 2015 can possibly bring your way…

“You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.” Henry David Thoreau

Amazon best-seller Veronica Scott is a two-time recipient of the SFR Galaxy Award and has written a number of science-fiction and paranormal romances. Mission to Mahjundar is her latest. You can find out more about her and her books at http://veronicascott.wordpress.com/