How I Spent My Year

It's January 1, and we all know what that means: I've got to write a New Year's-themed blog post. The year flew by. But weirdly, so many things happened that it also feels like it was much more than just one year. So this year, I'm writing my annual blog post about how I spent the year. 

Two Thousand and Fourteen...Million Words

The year 2014 started for me much as 2013 did. I'd just published a new book, Hope's Rebellion, and I started blogging all the writing tips I'd learned through the year. Then came July, and a ton of changes.

As regular readers know, I work as a freelancer under a different pen name by day. As a freelancer, I am required to seek out new jobs all the time. In July, I got one. I really enjoy it and it's very steady, a rarity in the writing game, but it's been incredibly demanding on my time. 

The wheels started to really fall off in October. I stopped sleeping in 2014 almost entirely. I'm getting 3 to 4 hours a night during the week, 5 to 6 on the weekends (when I'm lucky). You may have noticed that the blog hasn't been so consistent lately. I'm writing all the time, but working on books only infrequently. This does not lend itself to a lot of new Writing 101 tips.

Still, I did manage to publish a new book recently: Song of the Sea. It's the first installment in a new trilogy I'm writing, and a huge departure for me as an author. It's high fantasy, and subject matter I've never tackled before.

It wasn't the first project I started in 2014. I began the year determined to write another book, and spit out 6 quick chapters before I hit the wall. I realized that something just wasn't right, and hadn't been right for a few chapters. I tried re-reading. I tried to force it. I tried all the tricks that I always tell you to try, but it didn't work. So in the spring, I moved on and began writing "Song of the Sea" instead. But before that, I created a trailer for the still-incomplete project I began at the beginning of the year. This is the first unveiling of that trailer, and the only time I'm likely to mention the book for the next several months:

I plan on releasing "What Happened to Mary Celeste" sometime in 2015. After I finished "Song of the Sea," the problem that had been stumping me suddenly resolved itself. I was dusting one day when it just came to me all at once, and I suddenly knew exactly how to fix the book. So I'm back on track, and I'm on Chapter 8. Keep reading the blog through 2015 to find out when it will be released. 

My streak of breaking resolutions is still alive, a fact that will become evident if you re-read my New Year post from last year. But once again, I'll make plans. Maybe this year, they'll actually work out.

In 2015, I hope to release "Mary Celeste" and the next installment in the Saltwater Secrets trilogy. But first, I'm going to get some sleep!

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