Annus Horribilis

Annus Horribilis

December 31, 2020 0 By Elaine Arias

Well, it is the last day of 2020, a truly horrible year. I lost my job in April no thanks to COVID-19 and the lockdowns, and have been unemployed ever since. I also got the virus AGAIN this month (I pretty much had it last year, before it became a thing and it was horrible, but lasted maybe two weeks), which gave me pneumonia and resulted in a four-day hospital stay.

Oh, and the best President I’ve seen in my lifetime had his re-election flat-out stolen from him. My Christmas post was really, really pessimistic and I am sorry for being such a doomer, but honestly, it’s looking pretty grim.

I won’t even get into the bullshit race riots. That stuff enrages me and I would rather not go there.

This year has well and truly sucked. Unfortunately, I don’t have high hopes for 2021. That being said, I am going to try to stay as positive as possible and push forward.

There was only one good thing to come out of the race nonsense from this summer, and that’s a handful of mainstream book publishers deciding to take un-agented submissions from “people of color.” I decided to take advantage of that, given that I’m a “person of color” (I still hate that phrase) and submitted Nemesis to Inkyard Press. Unfortunately, they did not decided to publish my manuscript, but they did give some awesome feedback. I am going to make the suggested changes and resubmit in March. If I get turned down a second time, I will just continue with my plan to self-publish, and I will spend the next year saving money for an editor and cover designer. I am not a professional graphic artist, but I know my way around Photoshop and similar programs, but for my first book, I’d rather go with one who does cover design for a living. We’ll see.

I don’t know who will be in office after January 20, 2021. The notion that an obvious Chicom puppet like Biden becoming President is terrifying. It is not surprising, as we’ve been heading in this direction for decades, frankly. But it isn’t any less terrifying.

I wish I could be more optimistic, but I just can’t.

Anyway, next year I will probably change the blog theme, especially if I get close to publishing Nemesis. Since Gab shit the bed, I won’t post there anywhere near as often anymore, so I will post at Brighteon Social and Parler. My profiles are linked in the social media section at the bottom of this page (along with some other social networks I’ve joined).

Let’s hope I’m totally wrong and Trump stays in office and the lockdowns finally end next year.

Photo by Sincerely Media on Unsplash