{"id":1509,"date":"2020-01-01T14:23:11","date_gmt":"2020-01-01T20:23:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/travisheermann.com\/blog\/?p=1509"},"modified":"2020-01-01T14:23:13","modified_gmt":"2020-01-01T20:23:13","slug":"ringing-in-2020-reflecting-on-a-decade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/travisheermann.com\/blog\/2020\/01\/01\/ringing-in-2020-reflecting-on-a-decade\/","title":{"rendered":"Ringing in 2020: Reflecting on a Decade"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Happy New Year! Rolling out a whole decade and escorting in the New Roaring 20s! But hopefully without the Prohibition, gangsters, and stock market crash.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s been quite a decade for me, in retrospect. Most days, it&#8217;s really hard to see the forest for the trees. What&#8217;s really easy is to let our brains get in our own way. The turning of a decade is the perfect opportunity to reflect on the ups and downs of life and career.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So\u00a0I&#8217;m going to take this opportunity to reflect on what I accomplished in the last ten years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Wrote and published six books under my own name:<em>\u00a0Rogues of the Black Fury, The Wild Boys, Sword of the Ronin, Spirit of the Ronin, Death Wind<\/em>, and\u00a0<em>The Hammer Falls<\/em>. Three more novels will be forthcoming in 2020.<\/li><li>Launched a new YA pen name to reboot\u00a0<em>The Wild Boys<\/em>\u00a0under a new title, complete with a new sequel, and wrote a stand-alone magical realism novel due out in the Spring of 2020,\u00a0<em>Junk Magic and Guitar Dreams<\/em>.<\/li><li>Ghostwrote four books for clients, two novels and two memoirs.<\/li><li>Got a Master of Arts in English.<\/li><li>Launched a new comic book based on my Ronin Trilogy,\u00a0<em>Legend of the Ronin<\/em>.<\/li><li>Relaunched two of my early novels on\u00a0<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.wattpad.com\/user\/TravisHeermann\" target=\"_blank\">Wattpad<\/a>,\u00a0<em>The Ivory Star<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0<em>Blood of the One<\/em>.\u00a0<\/li><li>Returned to my freelance roots in the gaming industry, working on the<em>\u00a0Firefly Roleplaying Game\u00a0<\/em>(what a thrill this was!) and fiction for\u00a0<em>Battletech<\/em>, one story of which was nominated for a Scribe Award this year.<\/li><li>Edited an anthology of Lovecraftian short stories,\u00a0<em>Cthulhu Passant<\/em>.<\/li><li>Started writing screenplays and shopping them around, submitting them to various film festivals and contests. They&#8217;ve brought home three trophies so far, but as yet no option or production deals. I have learned a tremendous amount about filmmaking and how the film industry works, but there&#8217;s still a long way to go. Here&#8217;s a meme that I think is applicable here:<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"500\" height=\"564\" src=\"https:\/\/travisheermann.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/be-brave-enough-to-suck-at-something-new-be-brave-65879856.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1510\" srcset=\"https:\/\/travisheermann.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/be-brave-enough-to-suck-at-something-new-be-brave-65879856.png 500w, https:\/\/travisheermann.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/be-brave-enough-to-suck-at-something-new-be-brave-65879856-266x300.png 266w, https:\/\/travisheermann.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/be-brave-enough-to-suck-at-something-new-be-brave-65879856-133x150.png 133w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Wrote\u00a0and published over thirty short stories and novellas in various magazines and anthologies.<\/li><li>Joined the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) and Horror Writers of America (HWA), two life-long goals.<\/li><li>Met and got\u00a0to know several of my writing idols, some of whom I can now call friends and mentors.<\/li><li>Met a lovely, amazing lady and talked her into marrying me.<\/li><li>Moved overseas again, to New Zealand this time, and back again.<\/li><li>Sat on panels at some of the biggest, most prestigious conventions in the speculative fiction\/pop culture realm, including Denver Pop Culture Con, DragonCon, World Science Fiction Convention, World Horror, and World Fantasy.<\/li><li>Redesigned and relaunched a website for each of my author names.<\/li><li>Learned to play blues guitar (badly, see above meme).<\/li><li>Took up martial arts again in a fairly serious way, earning belts in Japanese jujitsu, krav maga, and ninjutsu.\u00a0<\/li><li>Went bionic with a full knee replacement. My super power is that I can no longer walk through a metal detector.<\/li><li>Thankfully avoided the kind of life-threatening illnesses that have claimed friends and colleagues.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Throw all this together at once, it looks like a lot. It&nbsp;<em>is&nbsp;<\/em>a lot, even though most of the time it felt like everything was moving at a snail&#8217;s pace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But this writing gig is a marathon, not a sprint, as they say, and I fully intend to be creating until I&#8217;m a hundred.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>May you accomplish everything you dream of in the coming decade. Set goals that will be the signposts toward your dreams.<br><\/p>\n\n<!-- Facebook Like Button v1.9.6 BEGIN [http:\/\/blog.bottomlessinc.com] -->\n<iframe src=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/plugins\/like.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Ftravisheermann.com%2Fblog%2F2020%2F01%2F01%2Fringing-in-2020-reflecting-on-a-decade%2F&amp;layout=standard&amp;show_faces=true&amp;width=450&amp;action=like&amp;colorscheme=light\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" allowTransparency=\"true\" style=\"border:none; overflow:hidden; width:450px; height: 30px; align: left; margin: 2px 0px 2px 0px\"><\/iframe>\n<!-- Facebook Like Button END -->\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Happy New Year! Rolling out a whole decade and escorting in the New Roaring 20s! But hopefully without the Prohibition, gangsters, and stock market crash. It&#8217;s been quite a decade for me, in retrospect. Most days, it&#8217;s really hard to see the forest for the trees. What&#8217;s really easy is to let our brains get in our own way. The turning of a decade is the perfect opportunity to reflect on the ups and downs of life and career. So\u00a0I&#8217;m going to take this opportunity to reflect on what I accomplished in the last ten years. Wrote and published six<span class=\"more-button\"><a href=\"https:\/\/travisheermann.com\/blog\/2020\/01\/01\/ringing-in-2020-reflecting-on-a-decade\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Ringing in 2020: Reflecting on a Decade<\/span><\/a><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-11 21:36:36","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/travisheermann.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/travisheermann.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/travisheermann.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travisheermann.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travisheermann.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1509"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/travisheermann.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1509\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1511,"href":"https:\/\/travisheermann.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1509\/revisions\/1511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/travisheermann.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travisheermann.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travisheermann.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}