2014 Wrap-Up, 2015 Look Ahead

photo by typofi www.freeimages.com

Once again in December I seriously overestimated my ability to get things done when life was busy and I was exhausted. But lots of fun was had, and lots of yummy food was made and eaten. The edits on Bad Hunting are still ongoing; I'm still really hoping for a January release but it might scootch into February. I also got another Estelend novel, The Healing Tree (bad working title) planned out; writing will commence once life settles down and gets back to normal. Tales of Azara and The Source-Fixer are complete and awaiting revision.

Looking back on 2014 as a whole: I only released two books, Sarya's Song and Beneath the Canyons. I've done some experimenting with various kinds of marketing and distribution, with mixed results. My health scare at the beginning of the year set me back, and the Daughter of the Wildings revisions ended up being a lot more work than I anticipated. But I kept going, and at least I got those two books out and also wrote Tales of Azara and The Source-Fixer.

Looking ahead to this year, I expect to have at least five books out, the rest of the Daughter of the Wildings series. I hope. It would be great to also get Tales of Azara out, and some more short fiction. The Healing Tree is next in line to get written, and I'm working on some short fiction ideas and also have plans for a sequel to Urdaisunia in the works.

In the past year, there've been a lot of shakeups in the indie author scene, and I'm mulling over some different ways to approach this crazy business of writing and self-publishing. Looking at some more distribution options, figuring out how to make Amazon exclusivity and Kindle Unlimited work for me instead of against me, becoming less dependent on Facebook, concentrating my marketing on more effective approaches instead of just random self-promotion in any old place where authors don't get chased away for mentioning their books, experimenting with pricing and packaging. I'm coming up with some interesting ideas; stay tuned!

On the reading front, I'm now at G on my A-Z challenge. It's going faster now that I'm choosing shorter books! Coming up soon I'll do a more detailed post, listing the books I've read so far and giving links to the reviews, or at least my thoughts on them.

It's late and I'm brain-fried and we've got a couple more busy days coming up, then everything should get back to normal. *knock on wood*

---