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Hey everyone! I’m happy to report that, for once, I actually have good news! Well, there’s a bit of bad too, but we’ll get to that later.
So the first good news is that I’ve started writing again. I completed 13 new chapters in Book 3 of Through the Stars, Darkly. Still going much slower than I’d like, but it’s an improvement over last month. I’d rather be writing my mystery novel, to be honest, which is what I’d planned for this month, but since I’m serializing TTSD, I’m kind of stuck…
At least, that’s what I thought, until I realized a few days ago that I already have enough material to keep me going until May! Which means I can take a break to write my mystery novel, yay! Except I haven’t finished outlining it yet, but that’s okay. I probably won’t complete it before the end of the year, but I should be able to get a good chunk of it done.
The other good news is that if (and it’s a big IF) everything goes well, I should have not one, not two, not three, not even four, but FIVE stories published in 4 different anthologies in 2024. Maybe even six. There are other cool things in the works, involving a shared universe, though I can’t say too much about that yet. But I’ll share as soon as I can.
So it’s looking like 2024 could be a big year for me… though it could also be simultaneously my most difficult—at least on a more personal level. My mother fell twice in the last few days and each time had a lot of trouble getting back up. So I’m gonna have to move in with her again, and this time might be for more than a few months. Which means less time to write and edit.
Oh, there’s another bit of good news! I will be discounting all of my books for Smashwords’ 2023 End of Year Sale like I did last year. This will be running from December 15 until January 1st. This only concerns the digital versions and will not be available on other platforms.
I’ll have 17 titles discounted at 50%. One novel (Everlife), 12 epic fantasy novellas (The Swarming Death), and 4 boxed sets compiling the novellas. Note that I wrote those 12 novellas under my Steffen Larken pen name.
What the discount will NOT include are my non-fiction books (they’re in Kindle Unlimited; besides I have yet to sell a single ebook of those, they do better in print and a little bit in KU) and my latest fiction release… I forgot to mention that, didn’t I?
So last week I decided to upload The Circle in the Sphere to Amazon. Been meaning to do it for a while, actually. It’s one of my more popular stories, so I figured why not put it up on there? And it’s also in KU.
By the way, if you got a free copy of this novella, I’d really appreciate it if you could write a review at the link above! It’d help give it some more visibility. Thank you!
Coming up this month
So November ended up being a one-story month, and it’s looking like December will be the same. I’m planning to focus less on novels next year, so that I can at least offer a bit more substance on Substack. That whole “6-books-in-a-year” thing really messed me up, so I won’t be doing that again! Live and learn.
So coming up later this month (likely on the 20th) will be that new Silius chapter I started working on but haven’t quite finished yet.
Oh, and you remember that Christmas story I wrote two years ago? I’m thinking of putting it up on Amazon too. If I can come up with a good cover for it, that is.
“Write 6 Books in a Year Challenge”
Update #11
Not much to report here. Looks like I’ll end up with just the one novel, since I keep putting projects aside. I could have finished TTSD 3, but I’d rather work on that mystery novel, so that’s that.
I’ll do a final report in January about this Challenge where I’ll share my thoughts on all this and some of the things I’ve learned from the experience.
So, since this is my final editorial for 2023, I’ll just go ahead and wish you all a merry, merry Christmas! Assuming you celebrate it, that is. If not, just switch Christmas for whatever word works better for you, I’m cool with that ;) I think what matters is that we enjoy this time of the year with our loved ones and that we try to be kind to each other—well, to be honest, we should be kind all year round, but let’s try even harder, okay?
Alright. That’s all for now. Over and out.
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Copyright (c) 2023 by Alex S. Garcia.