It’s a tradition to use the new year to reset our priorities or to make promises to ourselves or others (resolutions). Our goals often are personal, other times they’re career related. Sometimes we see results, too often we toss the whole concept aside and wonder why we bothered. I’ve been guilty of the latter a few times. Who hasn’t?

The past three years have brought huge changes in my life. In 2010 I was injured and the results changed my life forever. I was reasonably sure my single title career was over and I was praying I could hold it together to keep my category book career moving forward. In 2011 besides my baby girl getting married and flying from the nest, I dusted myself off and stepped back up to the plate to relaunch my single title career with the first two books in the Faces of Evil series. I will never forget the phone call that brings tears to my eyes even as I type this with my one good hand. I was in New York on business (my first business trip since the injury) and my husband called the hotel late that night. The first thing he said was, “Are you sitting down?” Next he told me how both those self-published books that no one in NYC had wanted had just entered the top twenty bestselling romantic suspense books on Amazon. Both stayed in the top 100 for more than six months. Even now I cry when I think of how the decision to go for it changed my life for the second time in as many years. In 2012 my digital sales on Amazon launched me into the arena with (at the time) a handful of others who had sold more than a hundred thousand copies of their digital books by self-publishing. By early spring I became one of 45 authors who negotiated major deals with traditional publishers based on that self-publishing success. It was amazing and such a tremendous blessing. It saved us in so many ways I can’t begin to tell you.

As 2012 came to a close the idea of what was coming in 2013 was a little terrifying. Would the success of 2012 spill over into this year? How would I keep up the pace? When was I ever going to take time for me and get in shape. I have always been a large woman, but after the injury months and months of being incapacitated left me in deplorable physical condition. What good was success if I couldn’t enjoy it?

That’s when I made a new promise to myself. Not to my family or friends or colleagues in the biz, but to me. 2013 is my year. Mine. Yes, I said mine. I know it goes against the grain of being a woman and a wife and a mother. But that’s what I said and that’s what I mean. This year I will get the weight off. This year I will get back into good physical condition. This year I will enjoy the fruits of my success. This year I will enjoy the happiness of my grown-up children and this year I will romance the man I married more than thirty-eight years ago. And in between I will write more  Faces of Evils books and Colby books and I will love every minute of this life that I am blessed with but above all else, moving forward, I will love and take care of me.

What’re you doing for YOU this year?