Hi all,
It’s time for my year in review! Truthfully I haven’t been looking forward to this as I think I set my goals too high last time. I’m proud of what I’ve done but I think I could have been a bit nicer to myself. This will be reflected in next year’s goals. Either way, I still hit a few of my targets!
Write Five Books
I managed to write four books this year! They were:
Original Elementals #6: Sunrise
Empty Skies #1: Missing Constellations
Street Rats
Original Elementals #7: Stormburst
One off my goal, but I’ve still done pretty well! I have plenty of time to write all of the books that I want to write, which is what I need to keep reminding myself.
Publish two books
Celestial Plague #2: Heaven and Celestial Plague #3: Purgatory have both been published this year!
Edit three books
I just need to do one more self-edit of Curse of Anubis #1: Halfway and that will be two books edited this year. Celestial Plague #4: Hell is completely edited and ready for publication next year.
Get covers designed for the final books in Celestial Plague
I’ve had actually had five covers designed this year, three of which are in the Original Elementals series. You’ll have to wait to see those covers revealed though.
Write the Curse of Anubis Short Story Collection
I’ve written a lot of short stories in the Curse of Anubis universe, mostly thanks to the Furious Fiction monthly writimng challenge. I’m going to work on making a few of the stories a bit longer and then they’ll be ready to be made into a reader magnet. There are also a few stories that I still want to tell that I’ve drafted but not completely written yet.
Write more short stories
This one I’ve actually done a lot of! I’ve been writing a lot more short stories thanks to my writing group and the Furious Fiction challenge. A few have even been submitted to anthologies and have been accepted.
Design more merchandise
The Elemental Dragons bookmark was released this year and I was getting another one designed but unfortunately there were communication issues with the designer. I would love to get more dragon stickers designed in the future and maybe also some cats from my series.
Set up a Patreon
I’ve been stalling on this one because I’ve made a few changes to this plan. Instead of the Empty Skies series, it will instead be dedicated to Elemental Dragons. I want to turn it into a dragon lovers paradise. Everything on there will be dragon (or cat) related and I’d love to get this set in stone for 2024.
Build up my mailing list
This one has been great because I’ve got 450 people on my newsletter now. I’m running more polls and giveaways to hopefully drive up engagement. I’ll be releasing the Curse of Anubis Short Story Collection as well as a thank you to everyone who has supported me.
Continue learning Spanish
Unfortunately this one has taken a back seat this year. I’d love to pick it up again at some point and carry on learning.
Read 50 books
I blew this goal out of the water and read 126! I love reading and found so many good books this year. I read a lot of GameLit which was recommended to me by work colleagues. I’ve got plenty of books on my TBR list to get through which will hopefully make a dent in all of the piles around my flat.
Participate in both NaNoWriMo and Camp NaNoWriMo
I participated in all three again this year and loved every second of it. I managed to hit one million words written total throughout all the challeneges I’ve done over the years. I love the community and all of the work that goes into creating NaNoWriMo and how many writers participate. It’s my favourite writing challenge.
That’s it for this week! Next week I’m going to discuss my goals for 2024, so keep an eye out for that. See you next Sunday.
