2017 Reflections. The Good, Bad, and the Ugly

Angel Ramon
Dec 25, 2017
5 min read

Hello there fellow geeks, nerds, and gamers. I hope you all are having a great hoilday season. Whether it's with your family, friends or even solo, I hope you are all enjoying yourselves. For me this is the time to reflect on the kind of year I had. I like to say that I had a mostly great year, but I would be lying if I were to say if my year was perfect. However, I'm still here breathing and for me that is the greatest blessing I could have asked for.

Let's quickly start from the beginning. I began to build the Hybrid Nation platform where I would start to do interviews for authors and help them get some extra exposure for their books and name. I had done close to 15 interviews in the beginning of the year alone. All the authors thanked me for the interview, which put a smile on my face. Some of them thanked me by getting a copy of my book of their choosing and for that I thank you from the bottom of my heart. Too many names to mention, so I have to make it general. I began to also build up my Facebook page for the nation in hopes of offering many more services such as E-book formatting and ghostwriting. However, due to my workload and my dedication to my creative side of thing. Not to mention I've had more success with my actual books, I regret to inform you that those two services will no longer be offered as my plate is mostly full for this coming year.

In March, I published my most raved book of the year, Janus: The Devil's Election. While pre-orders were not as good as expected, it made up once the rave reviews came in. It was perhaps my favorite book to write at that point as it combines the 2016 Elections with the elements of James Bond in an alternative history setting where a Russian terrorist named Janus tries to alter the 2016 Elections in his favor. You can grab this read on Amazon on Kindle or on Paperback.

Sales started to pick up mightly for my books once I began to build my author platform better and 2017 was already a better year than my rookie year of 2016. Fast Forward to June where I came out with my minor release, Angel's Nightmare Adventure 2: The Nightmare Continues. That is my second book for my Horror/GameLit series that would eventually takeoff the rest of the year.

After my second horror book I decided to take a little break to update my covers for my existing books to catch more readers. So I started with The Thousand Years War and I got great results with the new cover. After that I decided to do the same with Angel's Nightmare Adventure 1 and the results were much better that I could imagine.

As seen above, the book hit bestseller for Horror Short Stories in August and September. 2017 was the year that I became an Amazon Bestselling author and boy I was estatic. Going into the middle of August my confidence was at its peak and I felt unstoppable at that point. So I got started on a new project, The Thousand Years War: Life's a Beach Expansion Pack. I did a huge press release for the idea and it was met with open arms with all my fans along with new fans alike. At first it was fun to write and I enjoyed capturing the FPS element of the story. However, between marketing and my podcast I became exhausted and began to hit a bit of a wall. As a result, I decided to put the story away for a month.

Then my urge to write the next horror book came up and I decided to let the world know that I was working on my secret project known as "Nemesis". That translates to Angel's Nightmare Adventure 3: Nemesis. I got the first two chapters done in only two days before Hurricane Irma threatened my island.

Hurricane Irma threatened Puerto Rico with epic damage. Thank goodness that it missed us to the north. Despite that it was a rather scary storm with winds up to 80 mph. My house and town was spared of any major damage. I was out of action for a few days, but then I got right back to work on Nemesis while at the same time thanking God for sparing me. A week after Irma hit I got close to a third of Nemesis done and I was on my way to a Halloween release ready to make this the first major release in my horror series. At this point I was ready to turn the corner in my writing career.

Hurricane Maria would change all that however. A CAT 5 hurricane that degraded into a CAT 4 last minute came crashing into the island on that fateful day of September 20th, 2017. Although it was a CAT 4, it wasn't any weaker or any nicer to the island of Puerto Rico. As seen on blogs about the Hurricane on my blog, I saw death in its face as winds over 160 MPH came rushing into my house. The winds were so powerful that one of my windows blew off and I had to use a plastic shower curtain to prevent the water/wind from coming into my house. The winds were so bad that it felt like it was an animial was by my house, not a storm. At one point there was a gust of close to 200 MPH and I said to myself, "I'm a dead man, this is going to be the end of my life." At that point I thought there would be no coming back from this and everything would be ruined forever.

Little did I know that the actual storm would only be the beginning and came the aftermath. For three weeks I was without electricity, quality food, at times water, and no phone. I was cut off from the rest of the world. There were times I would skip meals just to conserve for the next day or if things were to get even worse. At times I would keep a bat next to me in case I had to defend myself in case a would be robber got close. Things were that bad indeed. To make the long story short, eventually I got out of Puerto Rico and went to New York to get some relief.

In New York, at first I felt welcomed. That is until I realized that people were just feeling pity for me and I realized that New York wasn't the same for me. Not to mention that my friends were mostly gone. I turned that depression into useful energy to work on my LitFPS that I had put away just before Maria hit. Long story short, I was able to finish The Thousand Years War: Life's a Beach Expansion Pack and release it a week before I went back to Puerto Rico. Happy to say that it's gotten three awesome reviews and many more to go!

When I returned to Puerto Rico, it was a sigh of relief and I said to myself that everything was going to be ok. I'm happy to say that I have gotten back to work on Angel's Nightmare Adventure 3: Nemesis. It's coming out well and it should be out Late January to Early Feburary!

Overall this year was a mixed bag of different emotions. While I'll never get over Maria completely, I will move on to bigger and better things. If you wish to pick up any of these titles that I just mention, feel free to visit my Amazon page and grab a copy of any or all of them along with the rest of my amazing catalog. In my next blog I will go over my plans for 2018, so stay tuned!