A Recap of 2024

This year started out as so many others: I had goals, and plans to reach them. Things were generally good at the start.

But life decided to throw a few curveballs my way. I didn’t accomplish as much as I’d planned because of it, but I’m still here, I’m feeling better than I have in a very long time, and I think 2025 will be a good year. But I’ll talk about 2025 and my plans for that later (next week.) This is supposed to be about 2024.

My Writing

I started 2024 with the plan to finish the draft of Wrath of the Dragon-kind (I was close to finished in January), and draft at least two more books, with the hope of doing three. That didn’t happen.

I finished Wrath of the Dragon-kind in late January, but it was in February when all my plans went awry. Health problems, work stress, and the grief of losing Magic (our cat, who was 18) all took their toll. The health issue required a major surgery, and I didn’t recover half as fast as I thought I would. So the drafting got behind… But that’s okay.

I finished the draft of Rites of Departure in mid-summer, and have been working on the next installment in The Mage War Chronicles since August. The current project has been difficult for me; I’ve been fighting some sort of brain fog since the surgery, and some days the words just don’t want to come. Add to it the fact that this main character is very morally gray, oscillating between ruthless killer and tentative ally, and is always paranoid… Well, let’s just say Daggerborn as a character has been a struggle. I’ve finished about 2/3 of the draft, so it’s coming along, but the work has been slow.

The last month or so has been better for me. I’m starting to get back into something of a writing groove, so I’m hopeful that I’ll have this draft done in the next month or so.

My Publishing

I began 2024 with the goal of publishing three books (they were all written and pretty much ready to go before the year started, so it wasn’t too much of stretch to actually meet this one.) The trouble came with marketing said publications.

February was when I learned about the health problem, a lot of the work-related stress hit, and when we lost our cat. It was a really bad month, and my morale was low. It was also the month I had scheduled Serpentus to release, and release it did. (Part of it was stubborn determination on my end, and part of it was me trying to avoid the repercussions of rescheduling a book that was already on preorder. Any author who publishes through Amazon’s KDP can tell you they aren’t forgiving if you have to cancel or change so close to the release date.)

I did what I could manage to promote the book, but it was admittedly minimal. I love that story and how it came out, and I hope it’ll find more readers soon.

I’d scheduled Harbinger’s release back in November of 2023, and it was set for May 26. It was yet another book I was unable to promote as much as I initially planned, and this time, it was due to the surgery. May 26 was only two weeks after my surgery, and I was largely absent from social media during that time (I was spending half of my days sleeping and the other half reading or just trying to make it across the house to get water or food.) So Harbinger was another book that got a bit neglected during release month. The upside to this one is that it’s book three in the series and already had a bit of a following.

(It wasn’t until about mid-September that I started feeling like myself again after the surgery. I was only out of work about six weeks, but was nowhere near 100% at that time. I’m happy to report I am back to my usual activities and am feeling much better now!)

And Legend released exactly one month ago, marking the conclusion to The Caein Legacy. But November wasn’t without its non-book-related stress, either. There were layoffs at my workplace. Thankfully, I haven’t been effected so far. I even managed to promote Legend and the rest of the series sufficiently to have my best book release week ever.

My Book Reviewing/Blogging

Sometime in November marked one year since I joined the team at FanFiAddict as a book reviewer. In that time, I’ve read a lot of great books, met some fun people, and have had some opportunities I don’t think I would have otherwise. A huge thank you to David for bringing me onto the team!

As of this post, I read 76 books this year, which might be a record for me. But as I mentioned above, I did a lot of reading right after my surgery. I wasn’t physically able to do much else for a while.

All of those books have been reviewed too! Here on my blog, and (most) were cross-posted to FanFiAddict’s site (it gets a lot more visibility, and I do this to boost the authors.) As far as reading went, 2024 was a great year.

And somehow, in the midst of all the madness life tried to throw at me this year, I kept up with my once-weekly regular blog posts here too.

And Now 2024 is Almost Over

This year wasn’t exactly a good year, but it wasn’t terrible either. There were just some setbacks, some unexpected stress, and general life things that got in the way of some of my plans. Now that I’m past most of that, I’m hoping next year will be the best yet.

Hopefully, life is done throwing curveballs my way for a while. 😊