The Year Ahead In Writing

If 2020 has convinced me of anything, it's that ambition is not a sin when it comes to my writing, so I'm going to swing for the fences this year and see if I can get a bunch of projects- some larger than others- done- or at the very least into draft form. I'm willing to give "go big or go home" a try and see where I end up. 

On the docket (tentatively, subject to change, etc) we've got the following:

1. Book Two Repackage: Book One got a shiny new cover and a new paperback release and Book Two is on deck for the same treatment- which with a little luck and some work I should be able to get over the finish line this month. So stay tuned.

2. Book Three Is Coming: It's close, I swear. I expanded the ending to close out some plot threads a little better than I had in the initial final draft. I've got to get a proper map lined up and then a cover and then I'll be looking to lock in a release date. Stay tuned for details-- but I'm thinking I can get this one over the finish line before June. We'll see if that holds up though. 

3. New Serial Launch: Hey, do you want to join in on the fun? Serial Saturday has moved on over to r/WritingHub, so it's got a new home and a new team. I didn't make it to as many of the Discord 'campfires' as I wanted to with the first cycle, but the feedback I got on my last serial was excellent and hopefully helped me to improve my writing as I went along. But now it's time for Season 2: The Skies of Venus... first installment should be dropping on the Reddits on January 16th and if you're not Reddit-ly inclined, I'll start cross-posting on the blog once my present serial is done.

4. Novella of Murder In Kinmen: I did 22 episodes of my first serial- which went up on my subreddit and I'm in the process of cross-posting it out on my blog. It took a lot of research on my part and to be honest, I'm not sure if I've got the knowledge base to really make it into a good solid book- but it does, I think, deserve to be a more complete story than it is and one thing I've never done is create a novella and I feel like the end state for this story is the perfect novella. So hopefully, Murder In Kinmen: The Novella will be dropping sometime this year. 

5. Book Four Draft: I'm going to go in a different direction for Book Four- as the Missus has always wanted me to write something she wanted to read- so I'm going to try my hand at... (gulp) romance. Way outside my comfort zone. My initial thinking is this: try and get a Chapter a month done and see where I'm at come November and NANO time- maybe I'll use NANO as a platform to supercharge the draft and get a finished product.

6. Book Five Draft: Well, you can blame this prompt challenge for Book Five. When the consistent feedback on something you write is: "It's really good, but it's obvious it should be a book," it's kind of hard to argue with that. So, yes, there's a Book Five in development. We'll see how that goes.

All of this is ambitious as all giddy-up, so I'll be happy if I can get even a fraction of this list accomplished (and certainly items 1-3 are pretty much all going to happen some point this year)- but we'll see about items 4-6. All right, I've written it all down for accountability purposes- so let's make this happen!

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