2024 Wrapped + 2025 Forecast (Literary Edition)

We're ringing in a quarter of a century. A quarter! A little known fact about me is that next to (quite literally) Christmas, New Year's is my favorite holiday. Not for the sake of staying up to early-o-clock the next day, but because New Year's is a silver pond that's quite good for yearly self-reflection and annual attempts at self-improvement. 

Prince John is an ICON
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And yes! We should be taking a page out of Prince John's book! Years are long endeavors and you just marked off another one. You get a crown for that and don't forget it. 

Part of all that reflection is looking back on what I've accomplished this past year: what went well, what didn't go so well, and mixing that all up to create some sort of recipe for the next.

Today, I'll provide my literary Wrapped and some things I'm especially excited for come 2025. 

Let's get into it then!

2024 Wrapped

Writing:

I wrote 153,000 Words to my robot and time travel science fiction. These words were entirely written between April and June, and I had no other words besides those. Words well spent, I say.

The rest of that time, I spent editing said book as well as brainstorming a story that I've decided to shelve FOR NOW. The plot eludes me. I managed to get actual footage of the plot hiding from me, as seen below.

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The audacity.

Reading:

Books Read: 47 Total Books read!

I have stats from both Fable and Goodreads, and I did just join StoryGraph because everyone's talking about it. They do indeed have some cool graphs about stories, but the genres weren't organized the way I would've liked. Here's the important thing: 23 of the 47 books I read this year were science fiction.

I am aiming to read even more science fiction this year.

I have no issues with this and I'm proud of myself for reading so much sci-fi. Did you know January 2nd is National Science Fiction Day? What a world we live in.

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I read Harry Potter (all 7) for the first time ever. Well-written books, I must say, and they helped the movies make a good deal more sense. I may even reveal what house I belong to someday. Unless you'd like to guess.

Out of the books I read, 2 of those 47 books were my own. I read my dystopian sci-fi in the summer to edit it -- and I can't quite remember if I actually got around to editing it or not. And the second was, again, to edit my own robot and time travel book, and I got very invested. The progress I made bodes well for the next stage of editing! We might get this to betas sooner than I thought!

Book highlights?

Oh yes indeed, here's a couple of book highlights.

Best Science Fiction:

Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky - I found all I wanted in robot fiction in this book. Give it a go. The writing style is straightforward and sarcastic in the most tasteful way, and there's plenty of heart for it being a tin-man's world.

Best Fantasy: 

The Will of the Many by James Islington - If you're looking for a dark academia meets Roman empire, then look no further. I bought this book immediately after listening / reading to it from the Libby app. I'm obsessed with the characters and deeply upset I have to wait until May of this year to read the sequel. 

2025 Forecast

Reading Forecast

I have a goal to read 40 books in 2025. There's a few reasons for that. Even though I read 47 this year, and I could likely make it to 50 if I so desired, I don't want to limit myself to short books just to make a point. Plus, life is looking like it's going to be BUSY this year. What with work, getting involved in my community, writing books / getting ready for publishing, and also running a newsletter and blog, and the tantamount thing of keeping myself happy and healthy, 50 books just seemed ... oh, I don't know ... ambitious?

Tenor.com

Exactly.

40 books it is then. You can see for yourself what books I'm hoping to read on my TBR, either on Goodreads or on Fable, but I'm most excited about:

1. The Life Impossible by Matt Haig - because I read 3 books by Matt Haig last year and those books are an inspiration to me.

2. The Devil and Mrs. Davenport by Paulette Kennedy - because I have a suspicion this could be a comp title for one of my books and it looks magnificent

3. The Arrest by Jonathan Lethem - because, again, it could be a comp title and the science fiction aspect of it has me absolutely intrigued.

I'll keep you updated on these specifically (and the rest too).

Writing Forecast

I am going to be preparing to query my current WIP by the end of this year. That should be two or three more rounds of edits to prepare it, including 1-2 passes for alpha/beta readers. While I waaaait, I recently found a plot bunny for a cyberpunk novel that I'm spending every spare moment thinking about. Picture Tron: Legacy meets The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater. Yes. Yes I said that. Yes, it's exciting.

And if you've never seen Tron: Legacy or read the Scorpio Races then this is awkward.

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The goal for the cyberpunk WIP is to have it plotted in time for April Camp NaNoWriMo and begin writing it then. If life permits me come November, I would also love to participate in another NaNoWriMo. I'll let you know.

That's it for today's post. My next few posts will reflect what the usual content around here should look like--writerly discussions and conversations, as well as more in-depth book reviews. But I had to jump on the New Year's Bandwagon while I still had a chance.

And I invite you to join me! Let me know what your top goal is for this year. Or, are we just taking advantage of vibes this year and leaving goals/resolutions in last year?

We'll chat real soon, friends.

 

Snapper out.