
It’s almost over: the year that everyone wants to leave behind. The year of a new pandemic, of civic strife around the world, of new threats and of dangers re-emerging.
BestSelling Reads authors are taking the next two weeks to look back on a year that left scars on every part of the world.

D.G. Torrens
The year our world stood still… For me, this has been a year of reflection and change. Mother Earth has had enough–this shared planet is our home, and it belongs to no one. We, the human race collectively is destroying it. The signs have been looming like an apocalyptic cloud for some time.
I have tried to focus on the good that has come out of 2020: The communities that have come together to help one another. The amazing health/medical sector that have been at the forefront of this terrible virus and fighting to keep people alive. When all said and done, this pandemic has shown us that when our lives are on the line, it’s not the wealthy and the billionaires that save us, it is underpaid and overworked frontline heroes that we need the most. They are the ones that keep us alive. All the money in the world makes no difference when you need your life saving during a pandemic.
As in the world wars of the past century, who saved us? The young soldiers on the front lines, and the nurses and doctors that treated their wounds’ again, underpaid and putting their own lives at risk to save ours.
2020 has brought the best out of people, but sadly, the worst too. I have had moments of despair and moments of joy. Sadly, my grandmother died during lockdown and I was unable to say goodbye and go to her funeral due to COVID-19 rules. Like so many people who went through this, it was hard and emotional. I still pinch myself from time to time, asking “Is this all a bad dream.” But no, the 2020 pandemic really happened. It’s like a Stephen King novel unfolding before our eyes.
My takeaway from this year: Leave footprints behind worth following.

Seb Kirby
It’s not possible to talk about 2020 without mentioning COVID. It’s challenged everything we know about how we relate to each other. The time in isolation should have been beneficial for writing, but that’s not been the case. The business of living in the shadow of the pandemic has seeped into everything and somehow consumed so much of our precious time.
Yet there is an upside. When we get through this we’ll know more about what we should value in our lives and, hopefully, there will be enough people who feel the same way and make plans to ensure this won’t happen again.

Scott Bury
For me personally, 2020 feels like I was on the opposite side of a turning wheel from the rest of the world. As things got terrible for everyone else, I managed to isolate and found time to really get going on some projects that had been dragging for a long time.
I stayed healthy and COVID-negative after I don’t know how many tests now. I finished the second book in the Dark Age trilogy, The Children of the Seventh Son, and published it! I also finished the third Hawaiian Storm book, Dead Man Lying.
But as the year wore on, I found I wasn’t maintaining that level of productivity. That third Hawaiian Storm book? It’s still sitting on my hard drive, waiting to be sent to the editor.
I haven’t kept my blog up to date the way I used to. And I haven’t read many books at all.
As the news broke that COVID vaccines are about to arrive, I dropped my new iPad on the concrete basement floor, shattering the screen.
Yes, I am hopeful for a brighter 2021. But I hope that I can get to the same side of the turning wheel as the world emerges into the light.

David C. Cassidy
Hindsight is 2020. Granted, it’s a bad play on words. But it soooo fits.
This year has changed me, and for the better. I’ve learned not to take the little things for granted. Walks in the park. Going to the movies. Dining out. Pro sports on TV that don’t feel like meaningless pre-season games.
Okay, I admit, these things sound trite. Maybe they are. But if this horrible year we’d all rather forget has taught me anything, it’s this: Gratitude. If I’d known that life’s simplest pleasures could—and would—be ripped away by some invisible virus in the blink of an eye, I would have cherished those “trite” moments all these years. Now I do.
I guess hindsight really is 2020.
Come back next week, when more bestselling authors take a last, but not fond look at the year that has steamrolled us all. Bloggers include J.L. Oakley, Raine Thomas and A.J. Llewellyn.