Accountability time.
2022 Goals
Complete a first draft of my epic fantasy novel by the summer. I've been sitting on this idea for a while, and I even started the book in 2014, but I'm ready to finish this bad boy.
Outline the rest of the Midnight Agency series. How in the nuclear hell am I going to end this thing?
Complete a first draft of Season Three by year-end. (This may be too ambitious. We'll see.)
Continue submitting current pool of short stories.
Start querying agents again about the middle-grade novel.
Write a new blog post at least once a month. Grow number of viewers.
Read at least 25 books.
Most of these are attainable goals, since I'm pretty disciplined, but I'm also a slow writer.
2021 Accomplishments
Short Fiction
As usual, I submitted short stories throughout the year. Most were rejected by slush readers and editors, which is typical. I did receive a few kind words from editors, which is always nice, and several Honorable Mentions in the Writers of the Future Contest. My largest success story was being accepted into an anthology, which should be published next month (yay!). More to come. I'm also proud to have written 4 brand-new stories, which I added to the submission pool.
Here are some stats:
Unique short stories submitted: 7
Total submissions: 34
Number of acceptances: 1
Number of rejections: 33
Writers of the Future Contest: 3 honorable mentions, 1 Silver HM
Middle-Grade Novel
I continued submitting to agents in the hopes of launching a contemporary middle-grade series. Querying is a soul-crushing waiting game, far worse than short story submissions, and I queried 15 agents until July when I grew weary of the process and stopped. I'll start querying again in 2022.
Midnight Agency
In the summer of 2020, the publisher of MA essentially folded and gave us the rights to our work, including the cover art. I sat on that for awhile, but by the end of the year, I was ready to get the book out there again, so I self-published the first book in early 2021 with a new cover and title info. It was a frustrating try/fail cycle to use the tools that Amazon and Nook Press offer, plus I didn't have the software to tweak the cover. A few kind folks helped me out, and I was able to piece together a revised cover in the beginning of 2021 and release the book back into the wild.
In the meantime, I continued writing like mad. I finished a fourth major draft of Season 2 during the summer and sent it out to beta readers. After receiving their insightful feedback and implementing minor changes, I had a shiny final draft. I hired a wonderful proofreader (thanks, Mia!), and I hired Milan, the same cover designer that Fiction Vortex had used for the first book. I gave Milan a thumbnail sketch of what I had in mind, along with a description of each character, and he nailed them all. He even tweaked the first book cover for me. He was fantastic to work with, by the way, and I highly recommend him. Once all of that was finished, it was finally time to publish. I decided to use IngramSpark to publish wide. This meant fewer pennies of profit, but it was less frustrating.
Website
In addition to publishing Season 2, I launched my first website so I could be "out there." Because it's expensive to create a website, and I hardly make anything via my book sales, I researched various free site makers, and I liked what Wix could do. Altohough you can't find my site via simple searching (you have to pay for Google visibility), I managed to create a good-looking site, if I say so myself. (Thanks for being here, peeps.)
Merch
I've always wished authors had merch, so I created my own. It was a fun distraction, and a few kind people even bought stickers, mugs, and hats. The quality of the merch is good, and I utilize U.S. printers only, so I'll create more designs when I need another distraction.
Despite its horribleness, 2021 was one of the more productive years I've had, especially in producing strings of brand-new words. I woke at an ungodly hour to write before work, and I squeezed in a little time to write on the weekends. I will continue that in 2022.
Books Read
In my bookstore days, I used to read three books at a time (one at home, one while commuting (audio), and another on breaks at work), but since leaving the bookstore I've read a shamefully low amount. In fact, 2021 was my worst reading year. I managed to read a number of great books, though, and here were my favorites from 2021, which I rated 4 or 5 stars on Goodreads:
Spectacular essays about the life of the Foo Fighters' frontman, blending moments from his childhood, punk rock days, Nirvana, Foo Fighters, and fatherhood. I didn't think Dave could get any cooler, but his essays floored me. I highly recommend the audiobook to get the full F-bomb Dave Grohl flavor.
Cemetery Boys - Aiden Thomas *****
This breakout YA hit had tremendous buzz when it came out, and I was intrigued by a magic system based around Santa Muerte, ghosts, brujos, and cemeteries, which was right up my alley. But it's so much more than that. Set amid a diverse East L.A. landscape, this tale deals with heavy subjects -- Lantinx culture, acceptance, transphobia, depression, gang violence -- but it's also a tender love story.
This horror title was heavily praised by a horror writer friend as well as an old bookstore colleague, so I couldn't resist. It's essentially about four friends who committed a shameful crime in their youth that broke cultural traditions. Now they're being hunted by a supernatural creature who is seeking revenge. What impressed me most is the killer narrative voice that Jones wields rather easily. I'm definitely going to study his craft.
Nightwise - R.S. Belcher *****
I reread my favorite urban fantasy novel by one of my favorite authors, and I loved it just as much as I did years ago.
I reread this fantasy heist novel with an unusual magic system - osteomancy. Although this premise is gruesome, the prose is beautiful and the heist is awesome.
Early in the year, I conducted a little case study. I watched the original film (which I had never seen before), watched the amazing Coen Brothers' remake, and I read the book. I enjoyed comparing the three to see what the films chose to keep and why. The Coen Brothers nailed their adaptation of the source material, by the way. More importantly, the book was great, and I look forward to reading more books by Portis.
In 2021, I only read 17 books, which is terribly sad. I'm aiming to beat that number in 2022. Follow me on Goodreads to see more, and happy reading to you.