Hello everybody, long time no see.

2022 is almost over, and I’d like to take some time to look back at what I got done and what I plan to do next year.

So I wrote, edited and published Synthesis. This was a big one, pretty long (and pretty good, if I may say so myself). I also started a rewrite of Pendulum, of which I’m currently at maybe 40%. I plan to get this finished on my own time in 2023 and then push the file to my website as a free download instead of publishing scenes on my blog. I also wrote 5150, then completely ran out of steam four scenes before the end. Not that I couldn’t have finished it; I just decided to stop and take a break, and this timeout took me all the way to the end of the year. Finishing it would probably have been possible, but I decided against it. My personal deadline is January 15th, so there are still a few weeks left. Well, two weeks, I guess, and I’ll spend these editing 5150, writing the finish and publishing 5150. Not going to stress myself out over it. It’s going to be the end (for now) of my Aes Sidhe books.

Aes Sidhe was fun to write, but I think that, once I finish the Pendulum rewrite, I’ll wrap it up, unless it gains some traction some day. Not like it’d go anywhere. The thing is just, my original idea was “faeries in space”, and in the end, it turned more into a kind of Shadowrun, which is cool (I do like my books), but it’s not the kind of stuff I want to write long-term. That’s how it goes sometimes. You have an idea, and the characters and stories take you down rabbit holes, and you’ll never know where you’ll end up until you get there. I did enjoy the ride, but I believe I’d like to be in a different place.

So what’s the plan for 2023?

I did a lot of work on the worldbuilding for my new series. Not quite sure yet what to name it (my first idea was “Paravian Saga”, and if you’re into palaeontology, this will already give you an idea), and I won’t talk too much about it yet. I might also just not publish it ASAP, but instead write two or more books first, then get a set of good, cohesive covers for them.

I’ve also always had an aversion to newsletters. I still do, but with this new series, I’ll squarely land in the Space Opera genre, without any Urban Fantasy elements, which makes it actually marketable, so I might as well go for it.

The new series will have a broader appeal and will require a newsletter to promote, as sad as this may be. In the end, a newsletter email list is something I own myself. Following the Twitter drama of ’22, it’s probably easy to see why I think it’s a good idea to have things sorted out in a way that protects me from stuff like this.

2021 and 22 were more of a time of learning for me than a serious attempt at making writing “a thing”. I learned the craft, gained some experience. Now I got the workflow sorted, my tools in order and can do this in a more professional way that doesn’t eat up energy while not having much of a return. This is especially a problem, because I’m still working my day job, which is taking a lot of time and energy. It’s very hard to prioritise writing in a way that would drive my career at the pace I’d like it to… but it is what it is.

Anyway, the idea is to just write for now. Get the first book done (still in the planning phases, didn’t write a proper outline yet, but I’m getting close), then think about my future plans with this and maybe write more in the series before I make the push.

That’s it, my brief look back on the past year, and a glimpse of my plans for the near future. Thanks for sticking around!