2021 Recap and Looking Forward
December always comes as a surprise to me. How can we already be wrapping up the year when it just started??
The nice thing about the end of the year is all the recaps, reflections, and goal planning for the new year. For those who are unfamiliar with me, this is my favorite time of the year. I dive into my passion planner and write out all the fun goals I have planned for what’s to come!
So, what does that reflection and goal planning look like for the 2021/2022 years? Let’s take a look!
2021 Recap
Books read: 101
Wow, I did not go into this year expecting to demolish 101 books, especially since I started reading heavily again in May. Yes, some of them were re-reads, but this was the year I finally found my reading groove again. I was neck deep in the fantasy this year and holy crap, it was an adventure. You can check out my book reviews page to see all the wonderful books I loved (and hated) this year.
Books written: 6
Not only did I wrap up the epic fantasy Warrior Series, I also launched two new series this year! The Warrior Series was 10 books total and finished on a bang. Let me tell you, after writing ten books in a world, it was really hard to say goodbye. Kahyr and Rhish are still near and dear to my heart, and their growth across those books brought me to tears on several occasions. I might still tear up thinking about them.
Launching the spin off of my Soul Series (part of the overall Blue Star series) was the next adventure this year. The Star Series follows Nate and Finnley’s daughter Kiya as she explores being powerless amongst her two very powerful parents. At first, I wasn’t sure that her story was one that needed to be told right away… but wow, did she throw a wrench in my plans. When I started her story in November of 2020 for NaNoWriMo, she took over and made the words flow. Now she’s dictating the rest of the series that will be coming soon!
I say it’s coming soon because I had plans to keep writing it until the end… and then another character decided she was more important. Enter the Smoke and Shadow Series, following my new favorite badass assassin Brela. She demanded all of my brain attention, and holy crap, putting the Star series on pause was worth it. This epic fantasy turned into 750 pages of absolute joy for me. I found a new writing style, characters jumped off the page, and I could not get them out of my head. Now I have a prequel in the works and at least two more books coming after.
Looking Forward
Well, 2022 is going to be a bit of a toss up for me… I had this wonderful goal of reading 100 books and publishing at least 3 more books. But, this time around, I can’t really promise any of those things will come true.
Reasons: baby Violet Alexis is going to be making her debut in May 2022. Yeah, that was not entirely in the plans when I started putting together my new year goals. Life is about to be flipped upside down, and I don’t know what my schedule is going to look like. That being said, there are certain things I can get you excited about.
Star Supernova - book 2 in the Star Series - coming May 21, 2022. Yeah, it’s going to be written before that inevitable baby comes. I initially planned to move that date up, but life! You can blame my baby girl for that delay (actually, please don’t), but it’s still coming. That’s the only official date I have for publication next year.
Smoke and Shadow Series continues. I am currently working on the prequel to The Curse of Broken Shadows and I plan to release that next year, but whether it comes before or after May is still up for debate. I had a serious delay after our little girl decided that she was going to make morning sickness last all day and I couldn’t look at a screen for longer than a few minutes. However, once this prequel book is finished and Star Supernova is wrapped, book 2 is in the early stages and will be coming! I can’t promise how quickly that book will be written/released because by that time, I’ll be taking care of a newborn and trying to find a new schedule. But rest assured that chunk will still exist and be available some time!
Finally, I’m moving my newsletter to a bi-weekly schedule instead of weekly. Now that I’m back to writing longer books over a longer period of time, my release schedule is going to be a little slower than it was late 2020 and early 2021. That doesn’t mean you aren’t getting books. I’ll still have awesome updates in my newsletter for you and looks into my work. You can even get the more bonus sneak peeks on Patreon where I release unedited chapters and bonus scenes.
And if you want a special place to hang and talk about my books, check out Discord!
