Hello, 2022

Well. That sure was a year.

New Year’s is a time I usually enjoy. I recap, regroup, reevaluate, make sure I’m heading in the direction I’d like to go. I celebrate my victories from the previous year and make goals for the next one. As do most of us.

I usually reread the previous year’s post to see how many things I actually managed to accomplish. Looking back at last year’s post coming out of 2020, I see that I didn’t make a single goal. So…I guess all wins this year were extra?

The recap: I started this year doggedly looking for some hospital who would vaccinate me. As an airway specialist (CRNA) in a respiratory pandemic, it felt pretty aggravating to still be rolling the dice with the rona after my W-2 colleagues were all vaccinated. I was being asked to intubate cov+ patients and untested patients. But vaccine was scarce at that point, I’m a contractor, and I was therefore low priority.

I finally got a slot for a vaccine during a 24-hour OB call shift and had to ask a colleague to hold the baton for me while I drove an hour to get my shot. I got the second one in March, after staying up all night placing labor epidurals for babies that would share my birthday.
After that, I started feeling safer.

The anesthesia job I did for the first half of the year was a hard job with lots of call. I swore that I’d never do that type of job again. But it didn’t require airline travel, and they were willing to vaccinate me, so I did it until July and then took a much easier job in AZ. No call, 3 weeks on/ 3 weeks off. I got on a plane again and wasn’t so afraid. That’s when I finally started coming out of my 2020 haze.

Writing

I published "Enthralled" (a novella related to The Knight and the Necromancer) in January. As an aside: I realized as I was writing this that I never put "Enthralled" in my signed bookstore, even though I ordered stock copies. Oops. So now it's there. Along with all other books.

"Enthralled" was written last year, so it wasn’t part of this year’s writing. I intended to get back to A. H. Lee titles this year, but, in fact, I wrote only Abigail Hilton books. Here’s how that happened -

For the first half of the year, I continued to chip away on Cormorant, which felt like an enormous, never-ending, four-dimensional puzzle. Nearly 100,000 words later, I finished it in July (total book = 180K words, oomph).

After that, I had a lot of production work ahead of me to relaunch the Cowry Catchers/ Refugees saga under a single series name (Pirates of Wefrivain). I took the opportunity to reorganize everything. Along the way, I thought I’d package up the two Hunters Universe stories ("Awake" and "Water in the Desert") and give them a paper version.

I thought, "If I was smart, I’d write a new story to go with them, so that existing fans would have a reason to buy the collection. But I’m about to start the Sleipner-verse books (which will actually sell), and I don’t want to reacquainted myself with Hunters Universe, and anyway I don’t have any ideas…" And that’s when an idea ambushed me and dragged me back to Lidian for 140,000 words.

I wrote a 20K novella, then a follow-on 40K novel, and then 80K words of what will probably be a 100K third installment. And holly shit, I did not mean to do that. I don’t think it was a smart business decision, because these books will have a fairly small audience. But it was fun. Nothing has been that fun or that easy to write in a long time. I ended up breaking my word-count record for the years I’ve been keeping records (235,187).

My word-counts are not impressive by the standards of truly fast writers, and I only started tracking my words on a spreadsheet in 2013 (having been writing novels since roughly 1995, lol). But still. I broke my 2017 record (by 102 words, haha).

So, now I’m still in the process of finishing that last Hunters book, and…then I will write the Sleipner books? I think?

If you’ve been following me for at least a year, you know that The Knight and the Necromancer was a break-out success for me in 2020. This year, my writing income dropped vs last year, but not to pre-2020 levels.

I’m amazed my books continued to sell as well as they did, considering I published nothing new between January and Dec. I did almost no advertising. For most of the year, I just wrote (on niche content). In addition, I unpublished all the Cowry/Refugees books halfway through the year to avoid confusing people during the relaunch. Those are the bestselling portion of my Abigail Hilton catalogue, and they weren’t available for a good chunk of the year.

The result was that my income was even more heavily skewed towards A. H. Lee (around 90% vs 75%). Cormorant didn’t hit shelves until Dec, and my new Hunters stories will not start showing up on my bottom line until sometime this year. So basically Abigail Hilton went into hibernation in 2021 and I got to see basil sales rates for A. H. Lee with only 1 FB ad running. The result wasn’t awful, but I hope to do better this year.

My only actual publishing this year:

  • Enthralled ebook and paper in Jan, then audio in May

  • Cormorant ebook and paper in Dec

  • Republished the rest of the Pirates of Wefrivain saga in Nov, so that the whole thing is contained in 5 volumes, including all short stories

Accomplishments that will pay future dividends:

  • Negotiated my first foreign rights contract (K&N will be in Mandarin!)

  • Spoke with copyright lawyers regarding same, got many additional questions answered, now understand copyright better. Dang, lawyers are expensive.

  • Saw preliminary cover art for Chinese version (it’s amazing)

  • Wrote most of 3 new Hunters novels/novellas

  • Commissioned and received audio version for the first of these (Lullaby)

  • Commissioned and received covers for all the new Hunters stuff

  • Commissioned cover art for new collection of Prophet stories that includes "Adagio"

  • Commissioned and received cover art for a K&N complete series paper edition (got this on Dec 31st, so not available yet)

Goals for 2022

I’ve scheduled myself less in the operating room next year. As a result, I hope to have more time for production and marketing. I always make time for writing, but the production and marketing bogs down or gets ignored when I am doing lots of long days in the operating room. I’d also like to see more of my family and friends this coming year and do some travel that is not work-related. I am cautiously optimistic.

Writing and Publishing Goals

  • Finish writing Arcove’s Bright Side (that last Hunters book)

  • Write the Sleipner Book trilogy (I think it’s a trilogy)

  • Write another new series (that’s a stretch goal)

  • Publish the new Hunters stories in ebook, paper, and (I think) audio

  • Publish the Sleipner Books in ebook and paper (maybe get to audio before year end if I’m very ambitious and Kirt has time)

  • Publish Cormorant in audio

  • Re-publish all the Pirates of Wefrivain audio, so that it matches the new text versions

  • Publish the new "Adagio" collection in ebook, paper, and audio

  • Publish the K&N complete series in paper (with new cover)

  • Create some large print editions

  • Create some hardback editions

  • Do more with direct sales

  • Do more with audio sales in non-Audible venues

  • Be proactive about advertising

That’s more than enough to keep me busy. I hope you are finding some joy at the beginning of the year. Last year was a difficult one with some very dark moments. If you, too, work in healthcare…solidarity. I don’t know what else to say. None of us signed up for this, but here we are. I hope my stories provide a bright spot.

Or at least my cat pictures provide one.

At least Mochi. I hope Mochi provides a bright spot. Here he is in a box of books with packing paper.