Once, a long time ago, I would sit at my desk and pump out updates on what I was planning, and later have to walk back my plans as I ended up not following through. Eventually, I taught myself to just keep my mouth shut and do what I do and announce it when the time was right. I still make plans, I’ve gotten a lot better at following through, but I’m still not perfect.
At this time I would like to return to my age old tradition of letting my plans into the world, give status updates, and eventually have to let people down by revealing that I totally didn’t follow through on that one thing you really wanted me to follow through on.
I may make this a tradition, I probably maybe won’t. I want to stress that any future plans that I put here are liable to change. The reasons for these changes could be as simple as I didn’t follow through, but I have also learned recently (as I’ll explain below) that sometimes I’ll end up not finishing a plan for unforeseen reasons.
So let’s begin by talking about what I’ve been up to…
In 2017
Most notably in 2017 I released Guardian Chronicles: Freedom, a shorter than I like Novella following up last year’s Qin. This one ties up the loose ends left by Tiffany’s unexplained and stealthy exit before Drake could get answers. I wrote this one at the tail end of 2016 and did the editing through the first half of 2017.
During the first half of the year I was alternating my weeks between editing Freedom and writing follow up Novellas in the Guardian Chronicles series. After the release of Freedom I had my own freedom granted to me by finishing the entirety of the Volume 1 arc of Guardian Chroncles, thusly chaining myself to editing from July to the end of October. I also worked on outlining for NaNoWriMo(National Novel Writing Month) through September and October.
November I started work on a Guardians of the Rose novel, hit my 50k for NaNo, and then took a break from writing and editing for about two weeks while I did some reading and just let my brain not think about writing at all. Which is a lie, because I was thinking about writing the whole time and getting antsy to get back to it. Through December I continued work on GotR in an attempt to finish the first draft by the end of the year.
What are my plans for the future?
Guardian Chronicles
For the whole of 2018 I expect that the word on my mind will be Guardian. Starting with Guardian Chronicles. I have six more novellas written for Volume One. The follow up for Freedom is nearly finished editing. I’m awaiting final feedback from some trusted sages before I stamp it approved, and send it out.
Guardians of the Rose
Secondly with Guardians of the Rose; between editing novellas I intend to jump back to the novel to give it a once over, again and again, until it is ready. I’m hoping to have it in final draft and onward to being available by the end of 2018, or be my first release of 2019.
Project Updates
Guardian Chronicles: Bojangles and beyond
If you follow me on social media you will notice that for a while in June there was constant hinting at Bojangles coming. Originally Bojangles was meant for release on July 25th. The plan was to release each installment of GC Vol. 1 a month apart until it was complete. The problem that came in was that editing took a bit longer than I expected, I got better at writing while finishing the volume and wanted the earlier work to match the later work, so the edits on Bojangles were far more extensive than I had originally planned. The realest of problems though? Income, Jade is my cover artist and she had to pick up a job that ate up her time and we couldn’t afford to hire an artist for each of the remaining novellas. This is what I meant by sometimes its not just me not following through, sometimes it is financial or time constraints, or both.
I’m still playing with the idea of the monthly release for the rest of GC Vol. 1 just supplanting the 2017 release date to the same date in 2018. Bojangles will not be released in July as originally planned, it will likely be in April with GC 4 coming out in August, GC 5 in September… ect…
Yes they are named. No I won’t tell you the names.
Guardians of the Rose
As I said above, I’m nearly complete on the first draft, and hoping for it to be ready at the end of 2018. Score me?
Second BloodKnight Order
Where’s Amberside?! That’s what my oldest fans are thinking. It’s an outline, that’s where. Every time I sit down to write it–I don’t. I have outlines beyond Amberside, and will continue to outline through 2018. I want Second BloodKnight Order to be my next novella series following GC Volume 1. That said, my current plan for 2018 has a whole lot of editing in it. Editing drives me crazy. I expect that I will probably take a break at some point to put some old fashion words on paper, and it will be on a BloodKnight project… Whether this one or…
BloodKnight X
My NaNoWriMo 2015 project died off in the early days of 2016 when I turned my focus to finishing Guardian Chronicles: Qin. This last year I have written about two pages on this. 2018 I expect to write about the same amount. I am currently making a loose plan to have this released at the end of 2019.
NaNoWriMo 2018
I’m conceptualizing! At this point I’m unsure if I am going to do NaNo 2018. If I do I’m leaning toward the second BloodKnight X book. I might also do the same as I did with NaNo 2016 and try and slam out 50k words on a series of novellas. If I do a mid year update post I’ll put my NaNo plans there.
Honorable Mentions
Wilhelm and the Series of Forgotten Shorts!
The world building is there. Rough ideas exist. But I will not be returning to Wilhelm for a few more years. So the people who read this series when I first released it, I apologize, but keep waiting for the return of our gold scaled friend…