End of Year Thoughts

The end of 2021 is approaching quickly (considering how this year played out, probably not quickly enough, though…) and it’s time to look back at the year and have some thoughts about what it was like or what the next one could be like.

 

I made a big change in 2021, shifting my projects from Word (which I used for about three decades) to Scrivener this summer. It’s a change I’m fully happy with by now (I might also shift my blog posts for good). I also began to pre-plot in Scapple, which has proven very helpful as I have a skeleton of the full story by the time I get down to sorting out the scenes. I’ll definitely keep on doing this, so it’s a lasting change.

 

I didn’t write quite as much as I wanted to. While I did get my four books for next year done (more below), I didn’t put in quite as much time as I might or should have. Yet, during the year, I learned methods to pace myself and get the work done, which is good. During quite some months, I did far more than my word goal, while I missed it by quite some in others. Next year, I want to dive into my writing projects, as I have many stacked, and build up a certain amount of padding again - not having to worry whether I’ll be done with the next book in time will be good for my nerves.

 

My methods have been refined - I now work by plotted scene and have access to my plotting while I’m writing (thanks to Scriveners structure). I am using the pomodoro method, which helps me pace myself without doing too little or too much. It doesn’t pay to overdo things any more than it pays to be too lazy. Thanks to Scapple, I can throw my ideas against the wall and see what sticks.

 

These are the releases for next year (already around as first drafts):

 

·         February 2022: Theoretical Necromancy Vol. 2 (The Return of the Devil Monks, The Cursed Paintings, The Suitor)

·         May 2022: The Fourth Reich (stand-alone novel)

·         August 2022: The Haunting of Winterthorne Hall (stand-alone novel)

·         November 2022: The Necromancer’s Notebook (Isadora Goode Vol. 2; No Honour Among Villains, The Medusa Serum, The Lich’s Lair)

 

With all of the books set up, I can write in peace, knowing that my releases for next year are ready.

 

My projects are breaching out when it comes to genre. There are new stories that might become series, I have discovered the joy of interconnected short stories (the first one to be released in February 2023), and I have plotted out more stand-alone books. There will also be more stories within several of my series, although both the “Knight Agency” and the “Black Knight Agency” are on a sabbatical for the time being. Yet, John Stanton, Isadora Goode, Gabrielle Munson, and Maddie Dempsey are all set up for further stories. Gabrielle is even going to get a novel and a set of short stories. Anne Logan might join them as a series character, as might Colin Rook.

I’ve branched out into murder mysteries with several stand-alone stories in that area and there’s a tribute to Hammer Films among my projects as well (“Fallen Angel” will be more gory and more erotically suggestive than my regular books, following the principles of Hammer Film Studios to always go to the very limits of what they could get away with in those aspects). I am challenging myself a little here and I’m looking forward to the end results of those stories.

 

Other plans for next year include setting up a proper website under my internet domain quittersink.com, perhaps even a little web shop, and putting out a few book collections (like the two Loki Files in one book or the first three books of the Knight Agency and Black Knight Agency). Scrivener allows for easy work on that, but I will have to re-edit at least the early Knight Agency books (the edited files will, of course, also replace the files for the regular books you might have bought).

Further plans, which are not for the next year per se, include dipping into the ‘books on demand’ market and, perhaps, even getting successful books adapted as audio books at some point (most likely not for the next three or four years, but who knows?).

 

Have a good Christmas and a good time ‘between the years,’ as we Germans call it. May 2022 be less chaotic and less dominated by a pandemic than 2021.