Last year went by quite rapidly, and now as we’re just entering yet another year, I decided to write a new style of post. As the title indicates, this post is going to be a look back at the writing progress I made last year as well as my tentative writing goals for this year.
January & February
The first couple months of the year were filled with all the things that go with publishing. I published Icy Interference, H.E.L.P. #2, and I also had a burst of inspiration for #3 and jumped right into writing it.
March
I kicked off March by writing 20,000 words the very first day. And I broke my record of words written in a month by writing just over 100k words. As far as projects, I finished drafting Fiery Failure which is #3, began drafting #4 and wrote over 20k on it, and finished up the rough draft of my first historical fiction book, Kitty & Kate. I also worked on a few miscellaneous projects, one of which was published in the anthology, No Clue.
April
After such a busy month, I was glad to take things slower in April. I did still write though, adding a bit more to #4 and beginning a new book, Remember My Royalty, generally referred to by me as RMR or My Texas Revolution Story. This was a book I’d been tossing ideas around for quite some time, but I decided to jump into writing it when I found out our vacation this summer would include several Revolution sites, which would include a wonderful opportunity for research.
May & June
Writing didn’t happen the month of May and while June had very little done, it was still a productive month as I did a good deal of research for RMR. I visited three sites that are included in the book and took tons of pictures that I’ve since been very grateful for as I’ve written the scenes that occur in those places.
July & August
July was another month with very little writing due to the fact that I was attending a music camp for three weeks. I did do a bit of writing before leaving, and afterward, I finished getting Fiery Failure ready for beta readers. In August I wrote a bit on RMR, and I also got a short story idea that…didn’t stay a short story. It’s going to be a full-length, stand-alone, contemporary book, and the working title for that project is The Rich Kids.
September
In September I continued working on RMR, figuring out a thread that had been causing me trouble for quite some time. I also had fun with beginning to incorporate real historical figures into the story.
October
October was my best writing month since March. I wrote over 10k words on RMR, and another 5ish thousand on another project. I also started editing Fiery Failure.
November
In November, I was quite busy. I finished editing Fiery Failure and sent it to my proofreaders, as well as editing another short project and drafting a bit on The Rich Kids. I also completed the very rough draft of Remember My Royalty, writing such scenes as the siege of the Alamo, the departure of the Immortal 32 from Gonzales, the Texian victory at San Jacinto, and the capture of Santa Anna. It still needs a lot of work since I mainly wrote the scenes pertaining to the war, and need to go back and add other threads and plot points.
December
I don’t usually do a lot of writing in December, but this year was the exception. I edited a Christmas novelette as well as doing some work on RMR, creating a scene list with all my existing scenes and the ones I know I need to add. This helps to give me a picture of what still needs to be done before it’s ready for the next phase of the writing process. I also began the second draft, which for me consists of going back and filling in the many missing scenes and smoothing the transitions between them and the existing scenes.
Summary
Overall, 2024 was a good year writing-wise. I had gaps where I did little writing, but I had other times where I did a considerable amount. And looking back at what I accomplished, I made significant strides forward on several projects.
2025 Writing Goals
And now on to my goals for this year. My biggest one would be publishing Fiery Failure. Lord willing, that will be happening in August.
My other main goal would be continuing to make steady progress on RMR. It’s tentative publishing date is early in 2026, which sounds far in the future, but it needs a lot of work if it is going to be ready by then. I hope to have it ready for beta-readers by the end of March, work on editing it through the summer, and get it to my editor in the fall. And of course there are many other steps involved that I’ll be working on interspersed with these steps.
And then, because I can’t stick to just one or two projects at a time, I’ll probably have other projects that I’ll be working on here and there: The Rich Kids, H.E.L.P. #4, an untitled Great Depression story, and possibly a not-yet-started idea that came to me while I was at music camp.
Conclusion
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