Change your dwarf
I am a very simple creature. When a book is going well, I'm happy, and when it's not going well, I'm grumpy. Book 3 of Lands of the Firstborn is not going as well as I'd like, so right now I am grumpy and convinced that the book is awful and all is doom and greyness and disaster. And yet, when I go back and reread Book 2 (which I was also grumpy about at the time), I really like it. So, I don't listen to myself, and try not to worry, and just keep plugging away.
It's traditional to do a review-of-the-year here, and equally traditional for me to point out that I really count my year from Warpcon to Warpcon, and that because I haven't been to a proper Warpcon since 2020 due to Covid, my years have gotten all mushy and ill-formed. It's still 2020 here, a long, messy and strange interlude that doesn't fit nearly into an end-of-year blog. This last bit of the Long 2020 has been punctuated by illnesses, and deaths, and unavoidable bits of life, but I've kept plugging away.
That's going to be a mantra for 2024. Just keep at it. Plug away.
Another thing I do when a book isn't going well is spend much too much time checking goodreads, and obsessing over reviews. Worrying over career paths, and getting things right. My resolution is to consciously put that energy into stupid stuff. To change grumpy into dopey, or silly, or strange. Because, ultimately, so much of any creative career is out of the writer's hands, you can only write your own books, and sometimes it's the silly stuff that works.
And honestly, looking at the world in 2024, silly is the best-case scenario.
OK, ok, proper review of the year.
Publications: NOVEL: The Sword Defiant, to moderate sales and acclaim. RPG: Tales from the Lone-lands, for the One Ring. Not a lot, but there was also the Moria kickstarter, and there's a lot in the pipeline for next year.
Conventions: Cymera (which was really good fun), GenCon (stressful, but worth it) and Dragonmeet (so terribly brief).
Favourite reads of the year: A SWORD OF BRONZE AND ASHES, BY FORCE ALONE.
Happy new year to you all. Thank you for reading/playing/reviewing/buying/just being there, as appropriate. See you in 2024 when I intend to be even more back on my nonsense.