I suppose it is the time of year when I should take stock of my writing career and decide how I did in 2014 and what I want to do going forward.
What I accomplished in 2014:
I released The River Leith and Smoky Mountain Dreams in 2014. I took TRL up from a 40k draft to a nearly 80k final product, and I took SMD from a two-year old start of 25k up to a finished product of almost 140k. That’s around 155k of new words on those books. Not bad. In addition, there is all the work around a release–promotion, blog posts, blurbs, seeing to covers and formatting, review requests. So, that’s a good start to the year’s wrap up.
In addition, during 2014 I worked on the four book Pictures of You series that I will begin releasing this fall. (Come hell or high water!) Book One, titled Pictures of You, didn’t really have any new words added (though it will shortly in order to make a few editorial changes suggested by Ajax Bell), but I did work on some edits there. Book Two, titled You Are Not Me, saw an addition of about 30k new words. Book Three, titled, You Make It Real, was written nearly entirely during 2014 and that brought in an additional 94k words. Book Four hasn’t been started yet and I will finish it in 2015.
I started Training Complex, the sequel to 2013’s Training Season, and have 62k there. I will finish that in 2015 and hopefully release this spring. (I always say hopefully because the muse is a slippery thing.) I did 5k of a silly, mainly sexy “virginity loss” novella that I hope to finish one day. I wrote 2k of some Middle Grade things I wish I had time to toy with…we’ll see.
I suppose that’s all I worked on this year. Wow, that seems pretty shoddy. Let’s add it up.
Tally:
155+30+94+62+5+2 = 348k
Yeah, I need to do better next year. That’s just not enough words. *sigh*
Still, I won’t spend much space beating myself up. This is supposed to be a positive post and word count isn’t everything, right? So let’s talk about the fact that Smoky Mountain Dreams was #1 on the Gay Romance and/or Gay & Lesbian Romance charts at Amazon for over a week and remains even now (at the writing of this blog post on Christmas Eve, at least, if not the actual posting of it) in the Top Ten. Wow! So freaking unexpected and totally amazing! Thank you, readers, for making the end of my year extra-especially spectacular!
And let’s talk about the fact that The River Leith was an I Heart Indies! finalist, and that Training Season was nominated in the Goodreads M/M Romance Member’s Choice awards for Best Book of the Year! Let’s talk about the fun I’ve had getting to know readers and other authors alike, and the validating and fulfilling trip to Florida for Rainbow Con. It’s been a lovely and strong year even if I didn’t get close to my word count goal. (Which, to be even more fair to myself, I didn’t realize I had until I found myself disappointed with the total. I’d like to get 600k next year.)
What I hope to accomplish in 2015:
1) Get Training Complex out this Spring
2) Get Pictures of You out this Fall
3) Write Rock Star/Priest novel with Indra Vaughn
4) Complete Book Four of Pictures of You series
5) Finally decide what to do with my quirky/weird angel novella and the god’s plaything dark erotica novella, both of which I wrote a few years ago. I need to add what needs added and release them, come what may.
6) Finish Stalker Book 1
7) Start the Smoky Mountain Dreams sequel now that some key pieces fell into place and I know what I want to do with it
8) Start the third (and final) Matty & Rob Training Season book
And though I want to add even more that’s probably realistically too much as it is. Working a job and being a mom and yadda keeps me from cranking out the books, but I always like to overshoot because, hey, what if I actually managed to accomplish it all somehow? Wouldn’t that be cool?
So, here’s to 2014! You were a pretty good year to me, pal. Thanks for everything! And, welcome, 2015! I look forward to knowing you! 😀
