After each year closes, I like to reflect back on it, especially with my writing and publishing accomplishments. Honestly, 2023 was a difficult year on a personal level but a positive one on an author level.

2023 was the year of sucker punches. Almost every month I received a punch to my gut.

Starting with a chemical pregnancy & several failed fertility treatments to unexpected financial hardships and then onto physical ailments that have taken months to understand. Oh and bloody contracting COVID days before my birthday. Next came autumn with a breast cancer scare but thankfully extra testing showed the spot is benign. Luckily the last couple months of 2023 were a little gentler. Most of the long-term effects from 2023 will continue to be felt into 2024 but hopefully they’ll fade away between this year and into 2025. I’m not one to celebrate a new year, but I did for 2024! (I’ll also admit it was a wee bit cathartic to share a snippet of my bs.)

One thing that had helped me push through 2023 was my writing. In 2022, I suffered through writer’s burn-out after writing too much, too fast in the prior years. For 2023, writing gave me relief from the crash & burns in my personal life and helped me remain grounded. Ironic to say, considering my books are set in fictional worlds rather than reality. 2023 taught me how eternally grateful I am to have writing and creativity. Without them, I’m not sure who I would be as a person.

For 2023, I published three books and one short story, which was one book short of my annual publishing goal. But nonetheless, the three books were all 100k words or longer. Plus I finished out the year with a fourth completed manuscript even if it’s not published in 2023. All in all, I wrote 304,000 words this year and published 345,000 of them in 2023.

On top of that, I heavily edited Book 1 from The Alpha God series and had it narrated by Alexandria Wilde. That editing adventure showed me how much my writing has changed from Book 1 to Book 8. Overall, I’m pleased with everything even though I always want to do more. 

For 2024, I’m excited to complete the Of Wulf and Wynd quadrilogy (yes it unexpectedly went from a trilogy to a quadrilogy ) and The Alpha God series. I can’t wait to celebrate the fifth anniversary of Dancing in the Darkness by releasing a special edition print copy. Then after Of Wulf and Wynd & The Alpha God series complete, everything is open-ended for me. I have many ideas, maybe hundreds! But I’m looking forward to what happens next.

As a (personal) sidenote, I plan to host a Facebook auction to raise funds for reciprocal IVF for my wife and I. We’ve run into financial dead-ends after being on our pregnancy journey for a year and half now. Last year’s struggles tried to push us backwards, but we kept fighting forward. Now we’re at a gap in our road, trying to build a bridge across it to keep going. To learn more, I’ve set up a GoFundMe page and plan to host the auction later this month. Thank you so much for considering supporting me and my wife.