Paragon of Light ran longer than I expected and some issues that cropped up at the end of November meant I needed some extra time to finish, but the book is moving on to editing now and everything is on track for it to be released early in the new year. So that means it’s a good time to look at and revise my publishing plans for the coming year.
It’s normal for me to change plans a bit as the year progresses, but this year had more bumps in the road than most. I’d planned to write and release 4 books in 2023. Ultimately, I ended up writing 3 but only publishing 2 of them–The Spymaster’s Prize and The Artificer’s Wife. Late summer saw some books getting freshened up, but new covers and formatting doesn’t make a new book, so they don’t count.
For 2024, based on my productivity levels in the past year, I have a relatively simple goal: Write 4 books, and publish 3.
Obviously, the year will kick off with Paragon of Light, since it’s already written and just needs polish. With luck, this one will be ready by the time my birthday rolls around. So that’s published title #1 in the bag.
After that is when things get a little murky, because the order I write things in won’t be the order they’re released in. I’ll be diving right into writing the next Spectrum Legacy book, but as I mentioned previously, publishing those books needs to slow down for various reasons.
That means after Paragon of Light, my next book release might not be until summer, but when it does land, it will be an all-new fantasy romance story, and my first-ever fairy tale retelling.
So what about book release #3? Well, depending on how things go with the fairy tale and Paragon of Light, it might be Spectrum Legacy #5 (Paragon of Shadow) or it might be the start of a potential new series, one with books decidedly shorter than Spectrum’s installments have been. Paragon of Light took a lot out of me and ended up being much longer than I anticipated, and while that’s fine, it’s nice to write shorter things, too.
Regardless of which book ends up going out, release #3 will probably happen in late fall next year. Ideally, I’d like to space out my releases so they land every 4 months or so, but who knows if that will happen? This year’s releases were much farther apart than I wanted, so I can’t make predictions for how next year will go. With fortune, there will be fewer unhappy surprises, fewer health challenges, and more time for writing and resting, but I can’t bank on that.
That’s why building up to where I’ve got an extra book waiting in the wings, finished and ready to go out, is one of the big goals for the year. It will give me leeway for if problems like year’s arise again. I don’t think I’ll be getting back to my 2020 levels of productivity any time soon, where I published 9 books in the span of a year, but hey.
It should be a step in the right direction.