Happy New Year’s Eve if you are reading this the day it’s posted. Otherwise, Happy 2025!
I hope everyone had a great Christmas. I was pretty busy throughout the month finishing up my fall semester and attending family events as well as the inevitable last minute gift shopping and making.
Since this year’s NYE fell on a Tuesday, I thought it would be a great opportunity to recap what has been an eventful year for me. So, let’s travel back in time to the beginning of the year and see what we find.
In February, 2024, we find I’m hard at work preparing this blog. I’d been writing pretty much my whole life, and I decided it was finally time to share that writing with the world. I spent some time brainstorming and designing and officially launched this blog on February 10th. Some of my earliest posts were my reviews of books from the Golden Age of British mystery in my Queens of Crime Series. I started my blog with a three day a week posting schedule. Yikes! I’ve significantly relaxed my expectations and hopefully you have too 😊
The next writing milestone we find is in June, though I didn’t know it was important at the time. We find me working on an assignment for a “Short Story Summer Camp” online workshop. I only submitted one of the assignments as I was also taking summer college classes, but that assignment involved a certain PI named McAllen. We’ll have to wait a bit before we meet him again in our trip through time.
As we move on to July, we find I’m taking on my first non-school and non-blog writing assignment: my “Brought to Mind” Column in A Bundle of Thyme, an online monthly. The July article was about my great grandmother’s collection of butterfly pins. She was such an important part of my life, so having my first published piece be about her is special. I published six installments in the column, which you can find in the Thyme archives here. Even though I’ll no longer be writing this column, I’ll always remember Thyme as my first “official” publication.
Now we’re in August, and I’m getting ready for what was probably the most exciting writing event of the year: the publication of White Marbles! It was my first fiction book and a great way to launch what I hope will be many stories of adventure with a sense of humor. If you haven’t read White Marbles yet, it’s available as a paperback and Kindle edition on Amazon. If you like it, please leave a review!
As we enter the fall, writing projects don’t seem to be slowing down. I published my first article in The Old Schoolhouse, the leading homeschool magazine. As a homeschool grad, I love getting this opportunity to share what I’ve learned with current homeschool families so we can learn from one another’s experiences. “What to do with a Writer” is in the Fall 2024 issue, which is available in their back catalog.
Now we’re back in December. My last Thyme article has been published, I’ve published over 50 blog posts, I’ve sold quite a few copies of White Marbles, and my second article for The Old Schoolhouse is out. It’s available to read in the current Winter 2024-25 issue and called “Why do Kids Love Books but not Literature?” And I’m looking forward to what 2025 brings. More on that in a moment.
First, I wanted to mention that, if you have missed any of the things I mentioned in this recap, you can find links to all my non-blog writing on the “Links to my Work” page, and every blog post I’ve written is still here, feel free to page through it if you’re new.
2025 Plans
I’m not a big setter of goals or resolutions. I like to reflect on what went right about one year and think about improvements I could make in the next, but I don’t try to hold myself to anything too strictly. When we set resolutions and don’t keep them, we end up seeing it as a “failure” when it may just mean that February us has different priorities than December us did.
So, I’m going to put out some generalizations about what I want to do with writing next year. I think they’re worth sharing, but don’t hold me to them. Deal?
First, a “disclaimer” of sorts: I’m in college until early 2026, so school comes first right now. That means any non-deadline writing will take a backseat if I have a busy week of assignments. Blogging and book writing expectations and schedules have to be flexible. If I ever suddenly go silent for a while, just know it’s because of school and I will return.
That being said, I am hoping to post weekly on Tuesdays in the coming year. I have a blog writing day and posting day written into my schedule, so hopefully I’ll be able to stay on top of things with less stress.
Another thing you might be wondering about for next year is if I’ll be publishing another book. I don’t know yet. I have plans for the next installment in the Brownwood Grove series, but I’m not sure when it will be finished. Again, school is priority and it seems to take more time every semester.
I’ve also come to the decision that fiction writing is best kept on the level of hobby. I will still publish and sell books and enjoy whatever money that makes, but my goal is not to pay the bills with it. So, I’m not turning it into a stressor by enforcing overly strict deadlines on myself. I’d love to publish another McAllen book in 2025, but I’m not promising it. I will probably try to post occasional updates on the process, though, so stay tuned.
Another thing to watch for is a peek at some of my graphic design projects. You may not know that this is a growing interest of mine. I’m putting almost all my remaining college electives toward it and having fun exploring it on my own. (I designed the cover for White Marbles myself!) I don’t know exactly how or when I’ll be sharing more of my work, so, again, stay tuned.
Another note for 2025:
You may have noticed that my social media posting has been sporadic at best throughout 2024. This is because I’m really not a fan of social media or marketing in general, so I usually end up avoiding it since it hasn’t been absolutely necessary. In 2025, I’m going to try to at least post an announcement for every blog post as I know there are people who see my content there and won’t get notified another way. However, that may be about all I do. I’m just not influencer material.
Well, I think that about covers it! I hope you enjoy whatever of 2024 is left as you read this and I’ll see you in 2025!
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