A 2023 Reflection/Hello 2024

Very belatedly, here I am to tell you about the end of 2023, what I accomplished, what I didn’t, and what my goals are for this new year. It took me a month to write this post because, well, the big news is…*drumroll*

I had a baby.

You might already know I was pregnant if you were following socials but if you didn’t, hey, I was pregnant for most of 2023! Which was exhausting but also really fascinating as a process. I may discuss that more in a future post, or I may not. As you can imagine, there is a lot about the experience that is profoundly personal. For now, I will just say that while I had about as ideal of a pregnancy as you can manage — no major complications, unmedicated and natural birth with minimal intervention, and a healthy mom and baby at the end — the whole thing was a doozy and I have immense respect for everyone who has gone through it, much less managed it more than once. Also, we need major reform to our approach to women’s health and parental leave, but of course that is a huge digression and we’re here to talk about writing! Mostly! Anyway, suffice to say about 90 percent of my brainspace, especially towards the end of the year, was revolving around the impending arrival of my son, and 100 percent of my brainspace has revolved around keeping him (and me) fed, clean, and rested since he came along. So I’m very behind on any end-of-the-year-related work in the writing sphere, including on this blog.

(He’s a joy, by the way. Absolutely perfect. I cannot imagine the world without him in it.)

So with that acknowledged, here is what I managed besides having a baby in 2023!

• The Art Matters Grant, which included a poetry workshop, a film screening, and four public poetry installations inspired by haiku.
• A wonderful book signing with Mike Allen and R.S. Belcher at our local Book No Further.
• Formalizing my writing business and learning more about businesses as a whole (which is not my strength, for the record).
• Publication of one poem in Artemis Magazine.
• A contract for publication of my novella A River Wide with Interstellar Flight Press! (Release date is TBA still, but the link contains a wonderful preliminary review).

What else happened? Well, I did finish edits on The Faerie King and queried it out to several agents. Though I had some promising interest at first, no one has picked this book up and it will probably be trunked this year. C’est la vie, etc. I have the outline all prepared for the follow-up in this series (it’s a planned duology) and hope that I can finish the tale, since it was a lot of fun to write.

I also got beta comments on White Wedding (working title) though I have yet to do anything with them since life sort of got away from me. And I finished a very rough draft of Alabaster, but I suspect that novella is going to require some extensive revisions and I’ve set it aside for now since I don’t feel super happy with it and I need more brainspace to salvage it than I currently have.

I’ve also been working on the current WIP, working title of Briar Rose, which will be a return to secondary world fantasy for me (TFK was also secondary world, but a bit more on the romantasy side of things). This one hits more as a straight fantasy story than a dark fantasy story like The Creation Saga. And speaking of, I have drafted words on the last novel in the project, but unfortunately only about 15k so we are nowhere near a final book. I have in my head what I want the book to look like, but my priority has been trying to find an agent and sell to a traditional publishing house since self-publishing has…not really been something I’ve enjoyed as much as I thought I would, to be honest. At this point I can’t imagine many of you are waiting on that book, but if you are I do apologize. It’s my intention to finish the series and re-release it at some point, but my priorities have been elsewhere.

So that is the state of the author as of the end of 2023. No metrics this year, seeing as they are abysmal (I’ve certainly fallen down on short story submissions and most of my new words have been written by hand since that was easier to work into 2023’s schedule. Cue me staring at my notebook dolefully, which awaits my attentions for transcription.)

What’s coming up for 2024? I hope that I will have a release date for my novella! And some promotional efforts around that! And my hope is I will find a rhythm with parenting and going back to work that allows me to make some minor progress on literally any other project, be that the WIP, the revisions to White Wedding, or whatever else. But I do expect this year to be one of transition and my focus to be somewhat away from my writing career barring any unexpected developments. So I may be even more scarce around the blog than I have been.

Anyway, I hope that you all have a lovely year! I look forward to seeing what 2024 will bring.