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BloodKnight BloodKnight X D.J. Goulding Guardian Chronicles Guardians of the Rose Second BloodKnight Order

2018? You mean 2019…

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.

So let’s begin by…

Walking back…

That is right, I did exactly what I said I thought I was past last year. I didn’t follow through on anything! In 2017, I released Freedom, wrote first drafts of the rest of GC Vol. 1, almost completed the 100k Guardian of the Rose novel “Dawnbreaker”. In 2018, I set myself to releasing Bojangles and having Dawnbreaker ready for release. I did neither.

In 2018

I started the year off right by getting back to work on Dawnbreaker, I finished a few more chapters, but with two fully outlined chapters remaining I ceased work. I was burned out from how hard I pushed through NaNoWriMo 2017 and chose to take a break.

This is where it went wrong. Because while I was on that break the job that I work informed me that they would not be giving anyone a raise, for the second year in a row, and that our end of year bonuses would be moved to April. Due to this I decided to interview for a new job. I was then told that my position was being moved over to another contract and I was basically being robbed of my annual bonus, so I told them where to shove it and moved to the new job.

While on this new job I justified extending my break while I settled into the changes in my life. Once I settled a bit I went back and decide that Freedom’s cover needed work and I had a list of errors that needed fixed.

But then I made a new best friend! Yeah, he was training me and I was being all introverted and we were getting a bite to eat and the words Space Quest were said and INSTANT BESTIES! Turns out his wife is a darn good editor and she agreed to help me make my stuff the bestest it could be, because that free lance editor I used before did no such thing.

I have done minor editing work this year, justifying my lack of progress at this point on waiting for my editor to return EVERYTHING, because… I needed to justify why I was failing to accomplish my goals now.

Beyond this, I spent days and days of my time world building, so I am confident when I start writing again things will be much more smooth.

What are my plans for the future?

Guardian Chronicles

I intended for 2018 to be the year of Guardians, but it turns out 2019 will be. My plan here is simple. I’m going to rewrite Qin and Freedom, and then finish Bojangles, with the help of my awesome editor.

Guardians of the Rose

While I’m not working on editor recommended changes to GC, I will be writing the second draft of Dawnbreaker.

Project Updates

Guardian Chronicles: Bojangles and beyond

Bojangles is undergoing a new draft, inspired by notes from my editor about flaws in my writing. Further more, Jade is working on the fifth or sixth cover for it. This one might actually end up as the final cover.

The rest of GC Vol. 1 4 through 8 are in first draft form but while I was world building I did make notes on changes that need to be made, and flaws to the stories that need fixing, during the process of Draft 2.

My plan is to stick with a monthly serialized release for GC 4 through 8. But I may end up doing 4 and 5 back to back, a gap before 6, and another gap before 7 and 8 release back to back. Official release will not be in 2019 but see below for some abstract ideas that might allow GC 4 through 8 to see the light of day in 2019.

Guardians of the Rose

Two chapters away from completed first draft on Dawnbreaker. The two chapters are outlined with heavy details. I won’t be completing them with the first draft, I have decided that I will finish the last two chapters when I do Draft 2.

I did a deep dive on world building here, at least half of my building this year was building up this world. There exists enough now that I can continue the series past this book if I felt so inclined.

Second BloodKnight Order

The next chunk of world building went into Alteria during the Second BloodKnight Order. I have revamped my plans for this Novella series and have written a new first chapter to Amberside that is much more smooth and ready to launch the series.

BloodKnight X

A whole lot of world building was done here. An outline exists. This will be my next novel project after Dawnbreaker.

NaNoWriMo 2019

Nah, No. Not doing it.

Patreon

The last two years I’ve been slowed by issues with mine or Jade’s jobs. In 2019 I have decided that I am going to start a Patreon in an effort to start padding my budget for my writing. The Patreon funds will go strictly to my writing projects and will free up funds from my mundane, but actually pretty awesome, job to go to the boring bills and such–while allowing me to start paying my new editor, or buy Jade new art supplies so she can finish my covers faster.

This is where the hope for GC 4 through 8 comes in. I may start releasing chapters of the new GC content early to Patreon. This depends, heavily, on how well I’m able to get through editing and when. At the very least, once the Patreon is up there will be releases of the rewritten GC content as well as Bojangles and Dawnbreaker chapters. Time will tell how this turns out, there is a reason it’s toward the bottom.

Honorable Mentions

Wilhelm and the Series of Forgotten Shorts!

This is where a chunk of my world building went into, the world of Wilhelm, the piece of Nexus that bred this hero, and it has led to the end of this series ever being written as originally planned. The world building was for my NaNo 2018 project which was supposed to return to this project, but by the end I envisioned something new. It is still a few years away, just know that Wilhelm will return.

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BloodKnight BloodKnight X D.J. Goulding Guardian Chronicles Guardians of the Rose Second BloodKnight Order Tale of Two Times

2017 and Beyond

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…