I woke this morning with a sense of new beginnings. My granddaughter heads back to kindergarten today and her excitement is off the scales. She has taken to school like the proverbial duck to water and the two-week Christmas break must have seemed endless to her five-year-old way of reckoning time. Friends and family are headed back to jam-packed college and university schedules. I am just starting to feel myself again after six days of battling an inevitable winter cough and cold.

And the twelve days of Christmas came to an end today – January sixth. In a past life that lingers (in a good way) we called this day Epiphany – which can be defined in the small ‘e’ version as a sudden or important moment of realization. I will leave capital ‘E’ definitions to your own thoughts of past or present rituals of belief.

January first is a day ripe with New Year’s resolutions but January sixth is the perfect day for reflection and the opening of the self that is always a precursor for an epiphany type realization. We rub hard on that glass that we see through only darkly and wait for a moment of clarity to find us.

Today, I am poised on the edge of seriously beginning the effort that will see The Light Never Lies into publication. Much hard work has already taken place. It is easy, as this next stage looms, to lose sight of the fact that writing, rewriting and endlessly editing the book has already been a major accomplishment. A person doesn’t get to the publication stage without having (hopefully) something of value to publish.

In my imagination, the path ahead is strewn with countless unimaginable obstacles. I used an assisted self-publisher to put out Disappearing in Plain Sight and though not a path I would choose again, the assisted part certainly smoothed out a few bumps. I don’t know how this whole doing-it-on-my-own thing is going to work – a challenging position for someone like me. I usually like to be prepared for every possible scenario before even placing a foot on the path. But I know I’ve done as much looking into and preparing as I can – the time has come now for action.

And out of the blue – as epiphanies are supposed to happen – it occurs to me – there is as much to celebrate about tackling self-publishing on my own as there is to worry about. For starters – no arbitrary rules or deadlines – it is up to me to determine how The Light Never Lies will look as a published product. That is exhilarating. After all the work that went into the writing process, it seems appropriate to keep my own vision first and foremost throughout this next stage.

Sure, I don’t know exactly how things are going to unfold, how long everything is going to take, or if I have the skills required. But I’m hopeful and today is Epiphany.

Onwards to publication, my friends. Here’s wishing your day has an epiphany moment or two.