Goodbye, 2014!

I've never been more eager to say goodbye to a year than I am this one. 2014 was not a good year. A lot of stuff happened in my personal life that prevented me from accomplishing much of anything that I'd planned on completing within the year. It doesn't help that I've been sick for nearly a year now with multiple illnesses. After a year of going back and forth to the doctor to see why my throat kept swelling up on the inside, my doctor finally performed an allergy test and found out that I'm pretty much allergic to the world. (Seriously, I have an entire sheet of food, plants, animals, etc that I need to avoid.) Once we got that settled, I figured I was in the clear. That wasn't the case. I actually had a bad infection that was making me dizzy, nauseous, forced me to have a fever, and resulted in my throat closing on multiple occasions. That seems to have cleared up now thanks to antibiotics, but I still don't feel 100%. Something is still wrong, and I'll be visiting the doctors office again over the next week or two, so I'm hoping to start 2015 off on the right start.

One thing that you probably noticed during my projects this year: This was definitely a hint of loss in more than a few of them. After one of my multiple trips back up north this year to visit family, I came home only to lose one of those family members not even two weeks later. On top of that, another family member ended up suffering a stroke and being admitted to a hospital within that same week. They've only recently gone home, which is great, but the damage that the stroke caused? He's still learning to adjust to it.

Like I said, 2014 was an asshole.
But there were also some highlights.

My older brother came home.
I completed both The Emile Reed Chronicles and The Outbreak Duology.
But perhaps the best part? I cut out a toxic relationship from my life that has helped me to find time to work on my writing.

I don't know what 2015 has in store, but I'm excited to find out.
What I do know? Expect a lotttttt of new projects from me, all of which will be incredibly different from one another.

Before I end this, I just wanted to say thank you. I know I've been terrible at keeping my promises this year, and I feel horrible about this because that isn't like me, but all of you have stuck by patiently. Words cannot express just how much I appreciate that. Truly. I adore all of you so, so, so much.

<3 Nicole

P.S. This beast came in yesterday. I don't know about you, but it is a pretty awesome way to say goodbye to 2014.