It’s been a couple of years since I’ve done one of these posts— I had to dig around in the archives (and yes, it’s weird to me I’ve been doing this long enough to have archives) to find out and apparently, the last time was in 2022. I remain weirdly uncynical about the start of a New Year. I’ve got a TBR List for 2024. As you read this, my official list of goals for the year is up over on the blog. Some of it does still seem like an exercise in futility- I’m probably not going to have a shiny six-pack of washboard abs by the end of the year, however much I might like to hope otherwise, but I am increasingly convinced by the Power of Lists and the magic of making them and crossing things off of them.
(Seriously: the Power and Magic of Lists is real. That’s how I function on a week-to-week basis at work now. Just make a list of all the stuff I need to do for the week on a small yellow-lined notepad and cross it off as I go. Doesn’t work quite as well at home as the 2 Year Old tends to want to steal my list and ‘make his own’ on top of my list, which sort of defeats the purpose, but I’m working on that.)
Last year, my output on multiple platforms was really solid and consistent, so I want to keep building on that. While I either lurk or actively post on more social media platforms that I can keep track of by the end of the year, I had settled into three main content streams, including this Substack. Going forward, it’s going to look a little like this:
Substack: I promised writing, whiskey, and vexillology and I’m going to work hard on delivering on all of those things this year.
The Blog: More general content, book, movie, and television reviews and I’m trying my hand at writing the occasional column-style post over there. (I started these on Minds, but their Captcha approval thing went wibbly on me and I decided ‘Why add another place for people to search for your content when you could just put it on the blog?’ and that’s what I did.)
The Tumblr: Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and all genre-related posts are to be found here. This is my Nerd Emporium and I’ve gotten a surprisingly good amount of activity on there over the past year, so I’m going to keep at it.
Why three platforms? I’m not an expert on these things, but everything that I’ve read about social media marketing, content creation, promoting your writing, and books all seem to have a common thread running through them: don’t put your eggs in one basket. My hope (and again, I’m not an expert, so it may be a forlorn hope) is that if you stumble upon one of these platforms and like what you read, it’ll lead you to the other two and in the case of the Substack, more subscribers!
So, what’s on tap for 2024? Let’s find out:
Premium Launches In August: This is probably the biggest announcement I’ve got and I’m still kind of nervous about it, but I think I’ve got to. Here’s what I can tell you, dear readers:
Premium Subscribers will get access to one paid post a month.
The price will be as low as I can make it— I’m pretty sure Substack’s minimum is $5 a month, but I don’t want to scare people off, so if I can go lower, I will.
There will be plenty of free content available still— honestly, I don’t care if I pick up 500 more subscribers between now and then- though I’d be very excited if I did, I am committed to making sure that there’s always going to be free content on this platform. Nothing is going to make me go to an ‘all-paid’ Substack.
So why the change? I’m not opposed to trying the traditional route with any of my writing, but so far, I’ve been very much on the indie/self-pub/DIY side of things and I think after a year or so of submitting short stories out in the world and getting nothing but rejections for my troubles, I got tired of waiting. I have stories that I believe in and instead of trying to find the right home/publication for them, I figured, why not use the publication I have right in front of me? So that’s what I’m going to do.
I might submit pieces here and there going forward and I’m certainly not opposed to going the trad route with a book either, but if I’m an indie/self-pub/DIY kind of author, I may as well start embracing that.
Book 4 Update: It’s depressing to look back on a post from two years ago and realize that I’m still writing this thing, but tangible progress has been made. Currently, I’m sitting at 45,947 words and the big goal for this year is to get this thing into a completed, draft form so I can start polishing and cleaning up to release it sometime in 2025. What’s taking so long with this one? Well, I got a piece of feedback so good (from the Missus) I couldn’t ignore it, so that meant I decided to pause, go back, revise the first four chapters, and incorporate that feedback for the next (tentatively four chapters) before moving ahead to finish the book out. It wasn’t what I planned on, but again, this piece of feedback was so good I couldn’t ignore it. This is going to be my main focus for 2024.
The Impossible Rain: This was the project I didn’t plan on. It started life as a short story that I was submitting around without much success, but I realized that the problem with it was that it didn’t tell the whole story, so I started expanding it and it just sort of snowballed from there. Right now it’s sitting at 20,674 words. I feel like this is going to land in solid novella territory (between 17,500 and 40,000 words according to the Interwebs), so expect an e-release sometime late this year or early next year.
This is the year I’m hoping to get a couple more projects across the finish line and lay the groundwork for more going forward. Rest assured I’ve got a few other things percolating as well, but those are my big three for 2024. I’ve picked up a few subscribers along the way, so whether you are a subscriber or a first-time reader who just happened to find themselves here, thank you for being here! I hope to keep this place engaging, interesting, and more importantly fun in the year ahead, and hope that your new year is off to a great start!