Happy Holidays! I hope everyone’s doing well. I’ve missed you all!
It’s hard to believe I haven’t posted since April, but this year has been a series of unfortunate—and some quite tragic—events, and I’m going to do everything in my power to bend the coming year to my will!
Since I started writing in 2014, I’ve mostly ended my December with a look back at the year and by making plans for the next. So, it worked out well when Read Around the Rainbow decided to do just that.
I started 2023 with big writing plans, including five books I intended to finish scribbled onto the whiteboard hung by my desk. As the year progressed, that whiteboard became less of a quick reference to where each of my projects stood—dark blue ✔ for planning, bright pink ✔ for writing, lime green ✔ for a completed first draft, dark green ✔ for a completed second draft, orange ✔ for beta reading, aqua ✔ for editing, purple ✔ for published—and more of a reminder of just how much of a writing dumpster fire the year had become.
It’s not the first time writing had to take a backseat to everything else—I chose to take a break from writing in 2019 and 2020—but it was the first time I failed so dramatically. But then, five books for me is always ambitious.
While behind—I’m always behind—any momentum I had, screeched to a halt when my father was hospitalized in the summer with serious concerns that he would not be walking out again. This was followed by a health scare for my mother, my husband getting laid off at work, and losing a young member of my family to Covid.
Even now, as I write this, trying to get it scheduled to go live early tomorrow morning, I’m healing up from a sprained back—or is it called a pelvis sprain? I’m not even sure!—that occurred three days before Christmas. And while it made it too painful for me to travel with the rest of my family out-of-state to celebrate with my in-laws, it hardly mattered after my father-in-law called two days before Christmas to cancel because he’d contracted Covid.
So, yeah. I hope the door hits 2023 on the ass on the way out.
Still, 2023 was not all bad. My father is home and healthy, my mother did not have cancer, and as for writing, I began a TikTok account and a Facebook Page early in the year—I’m far too shy to have a group—both of which I have every plan to utilize far better next year, if only for the fact that making videos is so fun! I even managed the publication of Findley Black and the Reaper of Shivelly Park in July.
To add to my successes—and in times like these we must count every one we can—I recently completed the first draft of Revenge and the Sinister Seven which I hope to submit to my publisher by end of next month.
If you’re part of the Amy Spector Reading Group, or follow my FB page, there will probably be a blurb and cover reveal in a few weeks, so keep an eye out! Until then, here’s a peek.
The way I see it, that alone sets me up for at least some success in 2024, but I also have a completed first draft for the third book in my House of Witches series, Diablo’s Pit—which follows the story of Gideon—and some writing work done on The Monastery, Angel’s Ink, and Hemophilia, books four, five and six in the series. There’s also completed cover artwork for all four books—I’m a partner in a design firm and I’ll give you three guesses what I do when I’m stressed out and stuck at my desk, and the first two don’t count—and I’ll share them throughout 2024 and 2025 when publication is closer.
I also hope to pick up where I left off with Demetri Forlorn and the Library Between Places for 2024. This story was supposed to be part of a project with the Naked Gardening gang—Holly Day, Nell Iris, A.L. Lester, and K.L. Noone—this time celebrating World Letter Writing Day. I pulled out of the project this summer, and it still breaks my heart! But I will not let Demetri fade away completely, he has wet footprints, a secret admirer and a bee infestation to deal with after all, and I won’t let him down!
And those are my hopes for 2024! I hadn’t really planned to go into this post with such specific plans, but there you have it. While I’m well aware my plans may change—in-house publisher story calls are a siren song to me!—I’d like to publish Revenge and the Sinister Seven, Demetri Forlorn and the Library Between Places, and a book or three in my self-published House of Witches series pet project.
Wish me luck. Send chocolate. Oh, and pain killers!
Make sure to check out all the other Read Around the Rainbow author posts as they say goodbye to 2023 and hello to 2024. And here’s wishing you all the success for the coming year!
You can check out the other Read Around the Rainbow authors by clicking their names below!
Addison Albright • Holly Day • Lillian Francis • Fiona Glass • Ofelia Gränd • Nell Iris • A.L. Lester • K.L. Noone • Ellie Thomas
