It’s around this time each year that I do a wrap up of the year, what I got done, big moments, things like that. I know it’s only early December, but let’s face it, I ain’t achieving anything big from here till the end of the year. Not during silly season.
So … 2020 … where does one even start? I think we all know what a year this has been. Like, this has been A BIG ONE.
Let’s dive in then.

Publishing

Last year, I published 17 titles, plus did a whole bunch of other things as well (see last year’s wrap blog here). At the end of that blog I stated that I planned to slow down a bit in 2020, with the goal of publishing 2-3 colouring books, and begin releasing my Beshadowed series, with hopefully two novels published in the year.
I did that. Pretty much.

In February, just after Australia was devastated by the massive bushfires, I worked flat out to create a charity colouring book – Australian Animals and Wildflowers. With it, we raised over $6000 for habitat restoration charity Greening Australia.
Then my second new colouring book of the year, Dark Fantasy, has just been released. That’s two all new content colouring books for the year.

With the help of my awesome assistant, Kim from Kila Designs we also released a Faedorables Activity Book, the Tales and Myth bundle book, Grayscale Bundle book, and Faedorables 2, Animals and Flowers, and Fairy Minis books.
Right around March when I was promoting the charity colouring book was when it started becoming clear that the new virus spreading around the world was a BIG DEAL and the world turned upside down.

In Australia, we went into a lockdown of about 6 weeks (in NSW), and have continued to have measures in place all year to restrict the spread. We’re lucky (based on those measures and also largely on our geography and population density) to have nearly eradicated COVID-19 here. Things are almost back to normal in time for Christmas.

Personally, I never went out much anyway, and have been a self-employed homebody for over a decade, so not a lot changed. Except having the daughter home from school for an extended period which bumped all my work plans back a fair bit. Because no, I do not find it easy to focus on work when family is around.

I had hoped to maybe write three books this year, all in the Beshadowed series. I instead managed to write two- the first book in Beshadowed, and then an urban fantasy Rumpelstiltskin retelling. Which happened when a great opportunity to join an anthology came up.

Beshadowed is out now.
A Cage of Gold and Lies is available in the Magically Ever After anthology, which is now on pre-order and will be out in February 2021. After it is released there, I may also make this title available individually next year as well.

In other general publishing news, I also published jacketed hardcovers of a bunch of my books, the Empath Chronicles omnibus, and updated the colouring inspiration journals.

Painting

This is something I did a lot more of this year! Last year I only did like one full painting. But here is this year’s collection.

There are also a couple more not released yet, as well as a bunch more works-in-progress. On the other hand, life drawing classes were cancelled all year, which cut down on a heap of drawing practice time that I have missed.

General Business Stuff

I ran my first ever Kickstarter this year to fund the Emotionally Charged audiobook production, which went well. The audiobook is out now on a bunch of audiobook retailers.
I sold around 40,000 books this year. Which is just mind blowing.
I did zero in person events, for obvious reasons!

Random Personal News

We finally got our second bathroom finished, which had been sitting as an empty shell of a room for over a year before that!
We got a 3D printer, which has been fun, and I have been thinking about learning to 3D design some more artistic things…

What’s next?

After a year like 2020, it’s hard to look forward and make plans with the expectation of being able to follow them. So I’m going to be a bit more casual about my plans again next year.
Roughly, I’m hoping to get at least two, if not three more books out in the Beshadowed series. That’s top priority.
Between each of those books, I’ll probably do another brand new colouring book. Themes for the next two will be Mermaid Companions, and Witches and Wizards.
I’ll also be doing more paintings as well throughout the year.
For my business, I have lots of C related goals! Clean up, cataloging, consolidation, and celebration! 2021 is my ten year anniversary in publishing, so I’m going to be celebrating that. I’m also going to be attempting to clean up and catalogue all of my creations of the last decade plus, and work to consolidate all of my areas of creative interest. This might look like combining my selinafenech.com and fairiesandfantasy.com websites together, or bringing my novels published under a pen name into my main range. I have even been toying with an all new business name. So you might see some big changes next year!

Did I miss anything? What do you think of my 2021 plan?