One year ago my planned book launch event at Mysterious Galaxy had already had its attendance limited to the growing pandemic and we were just one day before California and very quickly following the United States and the world shutting its doors and going into lockdown.

My novel Vulcan’s Forge was released from Flametree Press March 27th, 2020 and I can speak with some authority that having your debut book hit the shelves the week the world goes into lockdown is terrible for sales. IT sort like if a sprinter at the starting gun discovers after hitting the ground with his face that someone has ties his laces together. Yeah, you’re in the race but you are not going to win it.

Of course, things were going to get worse. The lockdown shuttered all of our social lives and in June of 2020 my friend of 40 years died of COVID 19. here in 2021, we have lost in the United States alone more than half a million people to this pandemic and in the scale of such disasters poor book sales are less than inconsequential.

Still, I recognize that things could have been worse for me. I never lost an hour of employment and my wife and I have not contracted the disease and are now vaccinated against it.

The year did not have to be this disastrous and it is now upon us to rebuild our lives, rebuild our communities, and honor those who were cruelly taken from us.