2021 in Writing

This is usually a post where I sum up what I accomplished writing during the year.

This is going to be a short post. Kidding (not really).

Self Publishing for Canadians

My biggest accomplishment this year was turning Self Publishing for Canadians into an audio book. It was a lot of learning, and I’m happy with the final product. I have decided not to do my fiction books at this time. I just don’t have the energy.

Sin City series

I have two books written years ago that are set in the ’70s (ten years post Bayou Bound), but there’s one that needs to come before, and I have a plot hole/issue I need to solve in it before I move forward since I’m sure it’ll cause rewrites if I don’t.

Sin City is co-written. MB Miller has written accompanying pieces and four characters (Ray, Jimmy, Adam and Carl) are her creations. Since Ray is the Big Bad, it’s hard for me to feel like I can write the series alone since I use her characters. MB Miller has been busy with other projects so this series hasn’t been worked on in years. I’d like to get back to it, but I just haven’t felt like focusing on it.

Billie and Diana series

This is also co written with MB Miller and pretty much stuck. We have a second book that is 3/4 done, but there’s a few changes I want to make with Billie’s character that I’m excited about. We each write one character so it’s a series that needs us both working on it at the same time, and I don’t see that happening, so I’m not sure when it’ll get done.

YA Series/Joy Morrison series

I did work on this series this year. I finished the first book.

I still need to write the second, but I need to figure out some stuff in books 3-6 before I can do that. But there was a little bit of progress on this project.

I’m thinking I’ll probably just call it the Joy Morrison series since she’s the main character and focus of all the books.

Other Projects

I had joked I wanted to write a traditional romance, but I’ve realized I really don’t like romance novels (I’m likely greyromantic, which probably explains it). I prefer it as a subplot, and I prefer realism with messy endings, messy people and things that don’t go over well in the romance community lol.

The pandemic has really killed my creativity this year. I haven’t crafted, haven’t written much new stuff (just edited), haven’t done any photography or anything. I feel kind of dead inside creatively. I’ve thought about giving it up completely, but I feel like I’ll still work on the Joy Morrison stuff because I do like what I have planned, I just don’t have the mojo to do it right now. But someday.

An update on my YA coming-of-age project

When I finished Book 1 and Book 2 last year, I thought I was ready for them to go out. I worked on editing them a little more and then worked on Book 3 during Nanowrimo 2019.

As I wrote, I came up with a lot of ideas and plots that would have to be mentioned/included in Books 1 and 2. So back to those I went. Then a few wonderful research books landed in my lap, and suddenly there were some other elements that needed to change.

As of now, Book 1 is about 90% finished. Book 2 is probably 75% – by “finished” I mean done with re-writing, editing, proofing and formatting for print.

Book 3 is still in the same state as it was at the end of Nano – just over 50K in words, and probably only one third finished.

The good news is I have a fairly good idea of how the rest of that book is going to go, which should hopefully make the other books easier to write. I also have had some great ideas for shorts and novellas, either as freebies, mailing list goodies or Patreon content. Some are pre-series stories about non-main characters, some are novellas that fall in between the main novels (eg. summers between college years), and some are alternate POV or missing scenes.

I also have an idea to spin off the series after book 7 into a new series that will eventually circle back around to conclude the entire thing.

COVID really knocked everything off track this year, but I had a lot of paid work that captured my attention, so I’m hoping to get back into the groove and work on things for Camp Nano in July this year – if I can finish the research book I’m reading!