Hello Everyone!
One week until December and one more month of 2023 left. This year has flown by far took quickly, it feels like yesterday I was planning out my goals for the year. That being said, while I did complete some of my goals for the year, there was still quite a bit I hadn’t manage to accomplish. But overall there has been some real significant progress towards my goals as a writer and an artist. I managed to finally finish the first few drafts of my third book, The Legend of Nariko: Hellfire Rising, and made some progress in becoming a better artist to create better illustrations of my characters and book covers. However, it still doesn’t quite feel like enough and I want to make sure 2024 is much more focused.
Before talking about 2024, we should set out what December will look like. Winter holidays are coming up and usually I take this time to plan out goals for the next year. For December, I’d like to be consistent unlike the rest of this year has been. To put it simply, next week will be another book review, the week after will be another article about what writers can learn from that book, and the last post of the year will be my personal top 5 characters of the year. There was a last moment contender that took me by surprise.
But regarding how to progress with the blog going forward, a bit of review and consideration will be needed after what I’ve noticed this year. Despite this year being the lowest I’ve posted since starting this blog, it’s also been the year I’ve had the most views but I honestly have no idea why. The first thing that comes to mind is maybe it’s a quality over quantity thing, but I don’t necessarily think I’ve done anything better. To be honest, I’ve felt the quality of my posts have been worse this year. I’ll have to do some review and see what’s been working and what hasn’t and plan out 2024 accordingly. But regardless of the insights, I do want to be more consistent with one post a week.
The main focus is, and always should be, the books I want to write and publish. Admittedly I’ve felt that 2023 was a year I lost that focus and my writing suffered because of it. That being said, the final draft of book 3 should be done and submitted to my editor in the next few weeks and still on track for (hopefully) a March release. With that in mind, the potentially overly ambitious goal I have for 2024 is to publish book 4 by the end of 2024. Of course quality will always come first and if I don’t like how the story is progressing I’ll delay it if need be. But I’ve been rather frustrated with how long I’ve taken between each book and really have only myself to blame. But hopefully 2024 will be more productive and creatively satisfying.
With my books being the focus, one thing I realized I’ve been doing as a disservice to my books is that I don’t do enough to promote and get them out in the world. With this realization, I want to focus more on the advertising and marketing side of book publishing. Admittedly this is something I should have been doing better from the start but hindsight is 20/20 as they say. Part of this renewed effort will be the new editions to books 1 and 2 that will have updated cover arts, a newly drawn map (still the same layout but just cleaner), and some slight editing to fix some cultural errors I’ve come to realize. As previously stated, I’ll always provide a free copy to anyone who purchased the book before the edition update. You just need to send me an email at RaphaelTheAuthor@gmail.com with a picture of the book.
Hopefully 2024 will be a better and a year with more consistent progress 😊
– Raphael
Raph's Cozy Musings 