So today’s article is a bit different. In honor of the new year, I thought I would write an article about everything I accomplished in 2019!
First, I do want to make a note/acknowledgement here that I only accomplished everything I did in 2019 because of God. He did this through me, helped me, guided me, inspired me and I could not have done it without Him! He gets all the credit!
January – Hannah, from Ambassador International, got me the final cover designs for Sightless, Hunter, and Shifter and I did the cover reveal party. I also started planning the Book Whisperer but never started writing it until later. I also re read through the Valiant Series and wrote short stories in between each one because I knew I needed to get those done. I wrote: Healed (2,016 words), Bound (4,489 words), and Directed (1,667 words) during the 20s of January.
February – February 5th, I wrote Freed (2,995 words) and on February 6th, I wrote a short story into to Hunter called Forgotten (6,115 words). Forgotten was published first on the 19th. On the 7th, I wrote Restored (3,115 words) and on the 9th, I wrote Lifeless (2,555).
Between January and March, I believe, I started reading through the entire Valiant Series to make sure it all made sense. This was why I wrote the short stories to tie up loose ends after each book ended and to lead it into the next book in the series. During this time, I also rewrote one of the prequels to the Valiant Series, called Experiment (37,102).
April – I started planning the Eighth Curse Series and wrote a few short stories for it but never finished it. I put my AG: History Entries together and called it Cast In Stone. Hunter was published on April 30th.
May – On May 4th, I had my Hunter Launch Party with the family and it went amazing and everyone was so interested. I started writing The Plans I Have For You and worked on it throughout the year but got SO stuck. I think I finished writing Shattered Nations, book 3 in the Mystics Series (37,852 words written in it this year) on May 6th. On that same day, I also started writing Lethal Hearts, Mystics book 4 (50,194 words written in it) and finished it between June and July. I made a Word Doc for Beside Still Waters, reread it and wanted to edit it but didn’t have the motivation. May 11th was my first book signing that I did for Hunter and the family came and supported me and it was an amazing experience. I got one stranger interested and it made my entire day.
June –Finished Lethal Hearts, mentioned above. I started Born of Sand, my first Biblical Romance. I finished it within a week because I was writing like 5,000 words a day. Last few days I ended up writing like 15,000 words in one setting. In total, it ended up being 50,791 words long. I also sent out Beta Reads for Beside Still Waters. As they came back, I read them, but still wasn’t motivated to edit it.
July – On July 1st, Shifter was published. I put my entries from Author’s Games: Magi together, called it Dark Magi, and began editing it. It was finished editing around the beginning of October, 2019 (that includes the editors and beta readers and Michael and I going through it). That’s also when I set it up on Amazon and KDP. I also started and finished The Heart of the Phoenix King (6,097), a historical fantasy short story for Ariel and I’s anthology. We planned it and started trying to draw interest, at first not thinking we would get many people, but a lot of authors soon started joining in September-ish I think. I also compiled all my articles about writing into a folder for a book about writing I’ve been working on, just adding prompts and advice here and there (which all those articles I wrote for it ended up being 10,065 words). It got me started writing an article about freelancing websites, so I tried a whole bunch and found Iwriter and started it on July 26th. On July 3, I started writing Born of Blood. We also went on vacation in Branson during this time.
August – I started writing The Crystal Heist on the 21st. After a lot of planning and outlining, I was able to follow the outline and right it pretty much straight through. August 6th, I finished writing Born of Blood (52,386 words). I wrote Shifter’s short story ending—Reclaimed—on August 23rd (4,248 words).
September – I started planning and writing my Tarzan Retelling. Didn’t finish it but I add more to it every once-in-awhile.
October – Dark Magi was finished editing early Oct and I put it up on Amazon and got the pre-orders up. I finished writing The Crystal Heist on October 7th (56,749 words). On the 20th, I felt God wanted me to change my blog to just Christian articles or articles that had Christianity in it somehow. On the 29th, I finished writing The Plans I Have For You (47,481 words). I also started a Patreon on Oct 11, but don’t have any patrons as of November 4th. I did my first live reading on Oct 9th. I also finally finished the edits for Beside Still Waters and made it a novel at 40,000 words.
November – I started writing The Nutcracker’s Curse to join the Christmas Anthology called Once Upon A Yuletide. I also wrote a few short stories for my Christmas collection. On November 1st, I had my grand opening for my cover shop but no one bought anything. A few days later, one person bought one of the covers and another one was interested in me making them a custom. Ariel reviewed Shifter on November second and it really encouraged me. Michael and I started and finished editing The Crystal Heist after I heard back from Beta Readers. I planned 20 stories for next year and outlined them all, including the Tarzan Retelling, which is being called Son of the Wild and the Pocahontas-Cinderella retelling, called Daughter of the People. I finished writing The Nutcracker’s Curse, which ended up being 11,980 words).
December – I took a break from writing but wrote 28,893 words in Immortal the Lost Journals and also wrote two more scripts in the TV Show for it. My short story, The Nutcracker’s Curse, was published in the anthology Once Upon A Yuletide. I made a review team for The Crystal Heist for its release August 3, 2020. I got the contract for Born of Sand from Ambassador International. Allen and I finished the writing video and I planned the premiere of it for late January. I joined tons of newsletter promos last month, so this month, my followers on Bookbub and Goodreads grew. My newsletter and fangroup grew as well—over 70 members in my fangroup and 40 subscribers, so both have grown a lot! I also wrote two more outlines—one to a Little Mermaid retelling, part of the Tarzan and Pocahontas one, called Son of the Ocean and then another random romance, natural disaster to be a sequel to the book Earthquake (which is one in the list of 22 stories outlined for 2020).
I tallied up my final word count for the year, including all these stories, a few more shorts and micro tales I’d written throughout the year, and all the notes and articles I’d written and also my diaries (since I write those like a story summarizing my day).
In 2019, I published two novels traditionally (Hunter and Shifter, books one and two of The Valiant Series), self-published one novel (Dark Magi, book one of The Republic Chronicles), and published two short stories (Forgotten and Sightless, part of The Valiant Series).
I outlined 22 stories for next year and wrote enough freelance articles to equal 105,325 words.
I wrote 7 novels and 31 short stories.
My final word count for 2019 was 1,241,537
