Thanks for reading!
Any support, even just giving these posts a read, is always appreciated.
Recent Updates:
In case you didn’t see last month’s blog post HERE, I recently announced that my debut novel BEYOND THE RUINED NIGHTS will be released Summer ‘25. So be sure to keep up to date.
Project Progress:
Publication progress on BEYOND THE RUINED NIGHTS is paused at ISBN verification. I’ll be picking up that in December. Everything is on track.
I am currently outlining BOOK 2 of The Song of Calarine.
In the meantime, likely until Jan ‘25, the LitFic manuscript project is on hold, as well as the horror novella and SciFi post apocalypse project.
Recent Fascinations: Heading Toward the End of the Year
For those of you unfamiliar with how the end of the year typically goes on my blog, December is reserved every year for my TOP 5 READS. In the past this hasn’t left much room for talking through my year in writing. So, in the effort to have my cake and eat it too, that’s what I’m going to do here. Let’s just talk about what a mess 2024 has been for me and my writing.
If you’ve been following along for a while now, then you know how much things have changed since January of ‘24. I have gone from “in the query trenches” to well on my way towards self-publishing my debut novel next Summer. This has been a long, rocky road marred with varying crises (both writing related and personal). I have lost people, I’ve had mental health struggles, and I’ve, at times, struggled with writing all together, much of which has been documented here to one degree or another. So, where has that left me, as I work on book two and in a holding pattern on book one’s publication? How does that road look when I look back along it?
It looks incredible.
I don’t mean that in retrospect everything was easy and obvious, that certainly isn’t the case, but I think that often when we (meaning just people in general) look back over the year at life’s ups and downs we see it in cold facts of good and bad. But 2024 has not been a year of black and white simplicity. There has been a great deal of progress made in some places, near total stagnation in others. The year that I have had will, beyond anything, have an undeniable impact on my writing going forward, but overall, it is hard to look at the year and think it was entirely good or bad. It simply was.
So, looking back on everything that has gone on (so far) in 2024, I am hard pressed to say it was an outright BAD year. I don’t think I could say that about many years, with the heart of COVID being the sole outlier. I am, generally speaking, a pretty optimistic person, despite any signs to the contrary. That’s partly why I stayed pretty positive on querying until I finally turned away from it. Complaining often does little besides make me feel worse about a situation.
Now, one thing I will remark on is that, just like my comments thus far in this post, very little of 2024 had much to do with…actually writing. I spent a great deal of time on that original querying process, and I certainly have written a handful of things, including about 45% of a new LitFic manuscript that is currently on hold to focus on book two of Calarine. However, I published exactly zero new short stories this year, with all three of my current publications coming in early ‘23. I don’t mean to say that this makes me feel less-than or like a failure, I did a lot to further my writing career this year, but it is important to note, I think. Sometimes being a writer can mean very little progress on the actual writing, it seems.
2024 has been a year of very real progress. BEYOND THE RUINED NIGHTS was declared truly, 100% done and is on track for publication. I’ve started some other projects, I’ve broadened my reach online, and I’ve begun to establish myself as a local writer. It’s all part of the process.
Even the bad.
Even the hard.
Thanks for Reading.
