Read Around the Rainbow: looking back at 2023, forward to 2024

Our December topic is a look back at 2023, and forward at 2024 – so, let’s see where we are, as the end of the year approaches!

I think I’ve done…some of what I set out to do, though not everything I had in mind, at least judging from last year’s blog post! Last December I mentioned three things I wanted to do: write more full-length novels, finish some of the sequels that’ve been lingering, and get better at promo! So…

Last one first: I’ve tried to be a little better at promo, especially over in the Small But Mighty MM Romance Group on FB – lots of celebrations, events, etc! I also joined the land of the Blue Sky (I’ve got a couple of invites if you want one) and I’ve done some posting over there. (I’m still afraid of TikTok. I don’t understand it.) I have not done anything with the FB group, which exists as a shell that’s still set to private. I might try to see if I can get that up and running next month – you know, fresh start and all. I could still probably do more and get better at promo, but if the goal was to do a bit more, then perhaps I’ve done that?

I also did my first international book signing, at the RARE event in Melbourne, Australia, in April! It was tons of fun but I’m not sure it was overall worth it in terms of sales, versus expense? (I wish we had more LGBTQIA+ romance events out here – California, West Coast, at least this half of the US, so it would be less expensive!) I did love getting to meet other authors and at least a couple people who were fans of mine already, so that was neat!

Novels…I did, I think, write slightly more novels (versus novellas and short stories): Apprentice’s Luck was meant to be shorter but turned into a full-length novel set in the Magician universe (yay!), and K.S. Murphy and I wrote Chaos and Conjurations (book two in the Regency Magicians trilogy). For one that sort of half-counts, the revised & expanded edition of my very first novel, A Prophecy for Two (about 10k longer, with a new bonus story!) also came out this year – and I count that as an accomplishment, because of the whole getting-rights-back saga!

I think that’s slightly better than last year, which was mostly novellas and shorts, aside from Featherbed Puzzle (which was a short novel – just barely novel-length) and Spells and Sensibility (with K.S. Murphy). I would still like to do more – 2.5 novels isn’t that many (yes, okay, there were also a lot of novellas and shorts!), and I didn’t get to several of the ideas I’d had on my list last year – to quote myself from last year, “the one about Lorre’s daughter, and the final Regency Magicians book, plus Ember and Serenity, which is the book I think of as “very Patricia McKillip but also very gay” (okay, to be fair, that’s a lot of my books, but especially this one), and then also the m/m–but-eventually-m/m/m medieval thing that’s very loosely based on the medieval “Sir Orfeo” (which actually has a happy ending! and is more about good kingship!), which might even be two books”.

I also had a couple of box sets – the Character Bleed trilogy box set, and the Demon for Midwinter box set – so there’s that! Plus – coming in January! – we’re getting Flashes, the collection of my flash fiction romance stories for JMS, which will be long enough for a print release! (And it’s got at least two brand-new stories!)

Sequels…I did do two of the things on my list! We’ve got “In the Pass of Ghosts,” the next short story for Aric and Em in the Snails of Dun Nas pulp fantasy adventure world; also, the Naked Gardening Day fun from last year led to this year’s follow-up for Letter Writing Day, and my contribution was “A Flowering of Ink,” which honestly is maybe one of my favorite stories of mine – I love so many of my own lines, descriptions, phrases, if that’s not weird to say! I just really love how that one came out.

Sequels I’ve not done yet: the aforementioned Magician sequel about Lorre’s daughter, the Frost & Raine sequel novella, the Featherbed Puzzle spin-off (imagine Justin planning a wedding!), the next couple short story adventures for Aric and Em, the third and last book in the Regency Magicians trilogy with K.S. Murphy…and the big one, which is Leo’s spin-off book from Character Bleed, which has become a bit of a problem as far as length (not ideas; I can write Leo and Sam all day). It might have to be two books, but we’ll see. (That’s part of the reason it’s not done yet; I didn’t plan to split it, and didn’t write it that way, but it’s hit 140k and I’ve got three plot points left to address…if I end up splitting it I’ll have to do some work to the structure, so there’s a natural book one/book two…or else I’ll have to do some merciless cutting, since JMS has an upper limit of 120k for submissions, or so say the guidelines, at least…)

Sequels that’ve unexpectedly appeared: the follow-up novel (in progress) for Jer and Talis from Apprentice’s Luck (these two are just so easy to write for! I’ve got about 25k of it done already!); plus, already published, a couple bonus Character Bleed stories that’re also crossovers with Ben and Simon from the Leather and Tea stories (some of my first published stories)! Those were a delight; it was such fun to come back to Ben and Simon and tie them into Jason and Colby’s world, and to watch them all interact.

So…I’ll call that one sort of a mixed success, as far as checking off some sequels? I did do some of them, and plot-bunnied myself into a second Jer and Talis book, and the Leather and Tea / Character Bleed crossover stories make me happy. Perhaps 2024 will be the year I get to the Frost & Raine sequel… *laughs*

So, let’s see. In 2024…the big thing will be finishing Leo’s book(s?), because it’s been long enough and he needs his happy ending. And then we’ll get the Apprentice’s Luck sequel (VERY tentative title: Captain’s Fortune) because it’s zipping along. In January there’s the Flashes flash-fic romance collection, and in Feb, assuming I finish it, something for the JMS Love Wins themed call for this year. After that, in some order: 1) the collabs: the last Regency Magicians book with K.S. Murphy, and whatever we Naked Gardening and Letter Writing Crew do for this year’s anthology; 2) some of the aforementioned sequels! Probably the Aric & Em stories before some other things, but we’ll see.

I will also try to get the FB group going and update the website! (I might give in and pay someone for a proper website. I’m so behind on getting books up there. Can someone do it for me? Semi-serious question.)

Oh, non-fiction – the academic book on Star Trek tie-in novels got finished this year, and is in the hands of the publisher, and has a cover! So we did that too. It’ll be out in the spring because McFarland does two big releases, spring and fall.

I’ll try to do a post in the next couple days with the list of everything I’ve published in 2023 – it’ll take a bit of time to assemble, because I did not keep a good spreadsheet and my JMS page loses the dates after a book is published and the new Amazon author page format is dreadful (and wrong, in one instance, I know for a fact – “Lines of Light” did not come out this month!).

My off-the-top-of-head guess is…2.5 novels (the revised Prophecy is the .5), 4 novellas, 16 short stories including flash fic (one an honorable mention in the 2023 Queer Sci Fi anthology), 2 box sets, 1 poem. I feel like I’m forgetting *something*, though.

Now, off to poke at some writing, speaking of writing! Come check out what my fellow RATR bloggers have been up to…

Nell Iris

Addison Albright

Ofelia Grand

Holly Day

Ellie Thomas

Amy Spector