2023 Yearly Wrap

This year has been my most productive in a while. For the last couple of years I had developed a pattern of finishing four major projects each year (generally two novels and two colouring books).

This year, I completed six. This was my first ever three-novel-year, with over 233,000 words written, and I also did three new colouring books as well (although somewhat simpler designs). All of this alongside a bunch of other craziness, see more below!

Before diving in, I did just want to make a note about productivity. It can be so easy to get comparisonitis when seeing other people’s yearly wrap ups. I know I personally feel bad when comparing myself to authors who write dozens of books a year. Remember though that it isn’t a competition.

For starters, this is my full time job so I have many hours to dedicate to my work, and following that, I don’t advocate that the amount of work I did this year was at all healthy. I am feeling a hair’s breadth from burnt out in a big way. However, with the changes to the creative world and introduction of AI, I feel as though I have to make an extra big push right now to try to maintain a livable income with my work.

Now, let’s get into the run down!

Books Published

Novels and books released: Beshadowed Omnibus, A Wish of Ashes and Glass (and French translation), Beshadowed 2: Blood Bound French translation.

Other books/decks: The Practical Magic Oracle Deck, and Reading Journal

Audiobooks released: Entire Heartsblood series and omnibus , Beshadowed 1,2, and 3, and A Wishes of Ashes and Glass

Colouring Books: Natural Enchantment, Natural Enchantment Grayscale, Fantasy Alphabet, Fantasy Realms Bundle, Magical Creatures Mini, Magic and Goddess Mini, Cute Fairy Tales

Artworks Painted/Released

This year I mostly painted book covers and book related things, along with my two entries for this year’s 78 Tarot project (The Empress and Magical Tea Party). I did alternate ebook and hardcover designs for the Beshadowed Omnibus (and released a glorious special limited edition!). I created four covers for the new Shadow Dragon Saga (one not yet revealed outside of Patreon), plus maps and an additional illustrations. I also did the cover for A Wish of Ashes and Glass, and chibi designs for my Empath Chronicles and Memory’s Wake characters.

Events Attended

This year I attended Central Coast Comicon, Book Fair Australia, BABE Ballgowns and Books Event, and did a local market with the Coastwrite group. BABE was the showstopper, and an absolutely magical once in a lifetime experience.

Random extras

The year started out with about 6 months of kitchen/living room/roof/laundry renovations. In the midst of that Serene Conneeley and I launched our Practical Magic deck with special gift boxes.

My beautiful 19 year-old cat passed, and I fostered a mother cat and her four kittens for a few weeks (and look forward to doing it again next year!). I set up direct sales of signed paperbacks, ebooks, and audiobooks on my website here, and have also started releasing my audiobooks on my Youtube channel.

And myself and daughter have still managed to dodge covid for yet another year!

Notes from last year and what’s happening next

I spoke vaguely in my 2022 round up about the new series I was developing, which is the Shadow Dragon Saga. It will begin being released early next year, and the plan is to have the complete six book series finished and out by this time next year! I’m loving this series and can’t wait to share it with the world!

I hit all my other goals for the year, and more.

As for next year, I think I might scale back a little bit again. My main focus is going to be on writing the next three books in the Shadow Dragon Saga, but will no doubt try to do at least 1-2 new colouring books as well.

Readers have been really enjoying my fairy tale retellings as well, so I’ll be chewing over some ideas for what else I can add to that series and maybe plot something out for them for 2024.

My worries about AI are still relevant, and my income has certainly dropped dramatically since AI created books have been flooding the colouring book space. And AI books are now encroaching into audiobooks and novels in a big way as well. I do hope some people will continue to seek creations made by real humans and keep supporting artists like myself. I’m immensely grateful that I’ve continued to be a full time artist for even part of my life, let alone almost twenty years now (I think next year is technically my 20 year anniversary of being self employed!).

As we close out the year with a terrible genocide continuing in Gaza, it has been hard to feel very merry, but I hope that everyone reading this is able to have precious time with family, good health, and peace in their lives as we close out 2023 and move on toward the future.