Whoops. Is it still an end of the year review if it comes out in January?
I guess so.
This was an…interesting year for me as a writer. On paper, it was massively successful. The Voyage of the Forgotten, the third book in the Mercenary King series, released in November. The Kingdom of Liars published in Germany in December. And in a few months The Two-Faced Queen and Voyage will be releasing in German. We’ve had some other cool foreign rights translations as well. I attended DragonSteel and GenCon and both were fan-tastic. I should really write up a post about DragonSteel at some point. Shout out to the people who absolutely made my year by showing up with ARCs and hardcovers of my books looking for me to sign them. It was a good year. A more normal year and release than I’m used to.
Which is kind of sad, but after debuting in 2020, being able to attend conferences is pretty damn cool for me. But it’s also been quiet. I handed in Voyage to my publisher back in April of 2021. Edits came back in November/December 2021. And then I think I touched it for the absolutely last time in like…May 2022? I’ve been away from that world for so long it feels odd that something I wrote back in 2020 is finally coming out. This was a massive lead time for various reasons I can’t get into and I’m not sure I’d do it again. By the time the book came out, I had to reread parts of it just to remember what had happened when people began messaging me. Sorry to anyone who I made cry with the ending!
So, the other question is what I’ve been doing in the meantime. If people have been following me on social media, you’ve probably already heard of me talk about writing my ‘Fear’ book. I’m still working on it. Slowly. Carefully. I’m putting a lot of pressure on myself that the next thing I write will be perfect because…it kind of has to be. And that’s what I’m going to talk about in the rest of this update.
If you just want updates about what I’ve done and am working on, you can stop reading here. News will come when there’s more information. And I’ll be shouting the loudest about it.
For everyone else…let me talk about 2022 was like. And it was challenging. I use these year end updates to give myself and others a more honest take on things, so excuse me if it’s a little more melodramatic than normal.
Anyway.
I’m still dealing with consequences from releasing during the pandemic. LIke shit, I’d love to have a year end update where that wasn’t the case. Maybe next year? Still. The annoyances became bigger with my third publishing. Being an author is challenging at the best of times, but for some reason this year just felt like too much to handle. Maybe it was just because I was more jaded and knew more about publishing, but…I spent a decent amount of time this year wondering if I wanted to keep doing this.
Fuck. That’s a weird thing to write.
Being an author had been my dream since I had been in fifth grade writing the absolutely worst Harry Potter knock off anyone could imagine. I had sacrificed a lot to get here. And worked my ass off to get a contract when I was 23. But dealing with the high highs and low lows of everything that had happened to me since signing a contract really left me wondering if I could do it all over again. There were so many dumb parts of publishing that seeped away some of my passion. I love writing and telling stories but hate dealing with the business side of it.
There’s always this belief that gets passed around that you write because it’s a passion. And writing is a passion for me, but that feeling and urge to create doesn’t make up for the shitty parts. A passion still creates stress. A passion may not pay the bills, or even justify the hours spent on it. And if a passion is only making everything else around it worse, it becomes an obsession and that was something I desperately wanted to avoid. Alongside become one of those bittered individuals who blames everything and anything else because they’re not happy with the results. And this is always the worst part of writing a year end update or talking about my frustrations because there is only so much I can talk about publicly without burning half a dozen bridges down behind me.
I can always tell when other writers are doing the same because we all seem to use the same sort of language. Annoyed, yet avoiding direct conflict. Apologetic to the readers, but unable to explain exactly why things are happening.
So, let’s just leave it at that. I was tired. Truly utterly tired. And didn’t know what to do next.
So, I wrote. And wrote and wrote and wrote.
Tried new things. Weird things. Changed my style and how I developed plots, characters, settings, and everything else. Played around with new POVs. Came up with better hooks for pitches. And just kept writing and writing and writing. I’ve talked about Fear a lot, but that was just one of things I’ve been writing this year. Death is another. The Dark Lord is a third. (That’s the one I want to write after Fear). Wait. Have I talked about that one yet? I don’t think so. But it’s good. They’re all very good. Very me as I continue to try and push what the fantasy genre in a direction I think it should evolve into.
That’s kind of an egotistical thing to say, but authors don’t become authors by constantly saying their work is shit. It begins with someone saying either ‘I can do that to’ or ‘damn that sucked, I can do it better’ and then creating. And to continue in publishing, in my opinion, you must foster an ego strong enough to weather all the painful parts. Whether it becomes toxic or not is up to the individual.
I didn’t necessarily have that belief a year ago. Struggling with what I was doing opposed to what I was seeing. But I’ve been getting better this year. Quietly. While fostering an ego that says ‘yeah, I deserve to be here.’ A few beta readers have seen what I’m working on but that’s really it. I haven’t tried to sell anything else yet because I’m not happy where it’s at.
Because I must be better than I was when I sold The Kingdom of Liars. Publishing puts so much emphasis on the debut that sometimes it can feel that if an author’s first books don’t do well then it can be impossible to overcome. So, at the end of the year, just like at the beginning and the middle, I was once against faced with the same question: Do I want to keep doing this? Do I want to keep dealing with the high highs and low lows? Would it better for me just to write for fun rather than profit? Was there a point where I had to admit that my dream was harming me in the long run?
The answer I came up with was…I’m not giving up just because of the absolutely annoying start I’ve had. Publishing is going to have to lock me out, board up the windows, and turn off the lights because I’m going to keep writing books. This isn’t a passion for me or an obsession. It’s a job. One I love, but a job nonetheless and I’ve taken strides to make it my forever one.
Just give me some time to make what I’m working on next perfect.
But, for now, there’s the tentative first line of Fear:
Down the twisted, crooked alleyway off Main and Seventh, there is a stall that only appears every Leevan after the whales have set and before the nightmares come out to hunt.
Cheers, here’s to another year.