As we start 2025, let me begin by saying thank you to everyone out there who purchased one of the anthologies I was featured in or read one of my stories in 2024.
While I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember, I became serious about trying to do something with it about 30 years ago. I had some limited success in the late 1990s, selling a few stories and making it to the quarterfinals of the Writers of the Future contest, but I never got close to the dreams that I had. I took about 10 years off from writing (a great regret, but that’s a story for another time), and when I was pulled back in, I wrote for about 10 years without submitting anything. Then 2021 rolled around, and I saw an anthology call from Wolfsinger Press, which fit one of the best stories that I’d written to that point. “Domestic Dispute” had been accepted for publication three times in the late 1990s, and all three magazines went out of business before it was published. I polished it up a bit and decided maybe it was time to throw my hat back into the ring. It was accepted for Crunchy with Chocolate. That small success inspired me to try my hand at short fiction again, which is a space that I hadn’t played in for a while. I wrote “Sea of Regrets” for an anthology call that I was ultimately rejected for, but it found a home with Dragon Soul Press’ Song of the Siren in 2023. That made me think that maybe I could do this again.
2024 successes
Which brings us to 2024, the most successful year of my writing career by a long shot. I had five stories accepted and published, to only two rejections. One anthology, which would have featured one of the wildest stories I’ve ever written was canceled (but that story is far from dead), and I still have two others out in the wild awaiting responses. I completed a book for kids, which is currently in consideration with a publisher. I also completed a novel for adults in a new world. It’s the sixth I’ve written overall and will be the first one published, one way or the other. I’m awaiting some feedback on it now for a last edit before it goes out into the world. I also have a large chunk of the first draft of another book completed, which will be finished in 2025. I ended the year having written 285,034 words, a little under 15,000 less than the 300,000 I’d hoped for. But I’ll take it.
In addition to the successes, it was a year of an old dog learning new tricks. Most importantly, I learned how to have fun and weave a lot of my projects together in a web that no one really knows I’m spinning yet. I can’t wait for people to (I hope) figure it out. As a former “just the facts, keep it short” journalist for 20 years, I’m also learning to add length to my novel projects without feeling quite so much like I’m padding.
As for the rest of my life in 2024, well, the less said about it, the better. But the writing part was fantastic.
2025 goals
So how do I build on that for 2025? I’ve written out two sets of goals for myself. One list is realistic, which I’ll share here. The other list represents the dream state, and it will remain my own secret for now. Should it come to pass, I’ll be happy to share it in the 2025 wrap up. But here are the realistic goals:
- Write 300,000 words.
- Finish the first draft of No Man’s Son — hopefully that title raises a few eyebrows for those of you who have read the story “Blackhand” in Wyrd West: Cursed Canyon.
- Have either Dreams of Gold and Fire (my kids’ book) or Dragon Day (title subject to change), if not both, published or in the pipeline to publish by the end of the year.
- Get at least five more publications in 2025.
Given the things that life outside of writing threw at me this year and what I accomplished, these goals are more than achievable. I hope to be sharing a success story (and those other goals) a year from now.
Again, if you bought or read one of my stories this year, thank you. Feel free to drop me a note telling me what you thought about them. I’d love to hear it. Here’s to 2025. The best is yet to come.
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