Hello and Happy New Year, my friends!
2023 is in the bag, and my gosh that bag is stuffed. It’s hard to believe that my first full year as a published author was only one year. I have crammed so many amazing, challenging, rewarding, and occasionally frustrating experiences into this year I can barely think straight. I started the year a greenhorned newbie with no real idea what I was getting myself into, and I’m rounding out the year a grizzled veteran of the author and convention circuits.
I knew I was taking on a lot when I committed to so many different events this year, though. Nothing really blindsided me. This was always meant to be a learning experience: go out there, meet new people, figure out what events are best for promoting my work, and carry those lessons into the future. I pursued pretty much every opportunity I was made aware of the instant I heard of it, with little concern as to how much actual profit it would make me. I’m glad I did, because there were a lot of surprises along the way. Some of the events that I thought would be huge for book sales ended up being pretty big disappointments, and a few of the ones where I had no expectations whatsoever ended up being some of my best ones of the year. In the end, I achieved what I intended to: I know a lot of the best places for me to go, and I plan to definitely come back next year and the years to come.
Last year I made several New Years resolutions for 2023, and one of them was to attend 10 events throughout the year. I thought that was going to be a pretty big stretch, but in the end, I fully doubled that, attending exactly twenty author fairs and conventions throughout the year.
Another of my goals for 2023 was to attain the much desired 50 Amazon reviews goal for Tantalus Depths. There’s a common belief among indie authors that it takes somewhere between 50 and 100 reviews on Amazon for their algorithm to start favoring your book in their search engine and recommended book categories, so hitting that number is often a major goal for authors. I’m pleased to say that not only did I hit that goal just a couple of weeks ago, but I exceeded it! As of writing this, Tantalus Depths has earned 52 reviews on Amazon alone, and has 68 ratings total, most of them 5 stars! This was a huge achievement, but what’s even more impressive is how many ratings and reviews I’ve managed to get outside of Amazon. Thanks to Audible spotlighting it as their Deal of the Day earlier this year, its ratings on Audible have skyrocketed to 336, with 60 reviews. Goodreads is now up to 176 ratings and 51 reviews, so between those three main sources, Tantalus Depths has been rated 580 times and has 163 reviews so far. And that’s not even counting the book blogs, review sites, and podcasts that have featured Tantalus Depths this year. In just one year, tantalus Depths has made a huge splash for an indie title.
Alright, enough bragging about big numbers that only impress me. I also want to draw attention to another little story of mine that debuted this year to much less fanfare, but no less excitement on my part. My fifth short story in the Calling Void series, Neurophage, debuted earlier this summer in the Passageways: Mythos anthology, and it’s been a huge hit! Mythos has easily been the biggest seller of any anthology collection I’ve contributed to, and I’m going to pretend that has anything whatsoever to do with me and not just the amazing cover Kaytalin Platt made for it. Still, I’m very proud of Neurophage, as it gave me the chance to explore a really grisly horror writing style, introduced another great butt-kicking female protagonist in the form of Grace Mkembe, and allowed me to start setting the stage for some themes and locations I’ll be exploring in my next book: Proteus.
And that subject, unfortunately, is where I fell short this year. I blew my first two goals for 2023 way out of the park with my event appearances and my reviews, but my third major goal was to finish writing Proteus. Sadly, as 2023 closes in just a few hours, I am still very far from that mark.
I did make progress. I wrote a lot of great scenes when I could find the time throughout the year, and the story that is coming together could quite possibly be the best piece of writing I am capable of creating, if everything comes out the way I have it planned. But unfortunately, between my busy day job and filling nearly half the year’s weekends with conventions, I left myself very little time to do the main thing I’m here for: writing. Part of the big experiment of 2023 was finding the right way to balance my time between promoting and writing, since both are vital to an author’s success. I kicked butt promoting myself this year, in a way I never thought I’d manage so well, but it came at a cost to my productivity.
I’m okay with that, for this year. I learned a lot, and I have gained enough experience that I don’t feel the need to be quite so ambitious or adventurous for a while yet when it comes to promotional activities. But for next year, I’m correcting that imbalance.
I’ll be updating my event schedule soon to show my 2024 event schedule, so keep an eye out for that, but expect it to be much smaller than this past year. I’m only setting one specific goal for 2024, and that is the goal I failed for this year: finish Proteus. I’ll be attending a few pretty exciting events, starting out with Pretty Good Books’ Author Spectacular on January 20th, but for the most part, I’ll be spending this year focused on my writing. I didn’t set out to be a one-hit-wonder, after all, and if you thought Tantalus Depths was something, the stuff I have planned next is going to absolutely blow your mind.
Stay tuned, and watch the skies.
