A Look Back

I just finished reading an essay by Stephanie Land, author of Maid, which was turned into a Netflix series. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it. Here is the link to find it on Amazon. All I can say is that when I watched it, and later read it, I cried buckets of tears. It reminded me of my early adulthood. It reminded me of how far I have come.

Another time, I may speak fully about this. It is filled with painful memories, and my psyche has to be in a solid place before I can share those years in any detail.

In any case, Stephanie Land's essay reminded me to look back, not just on my early years of adulthood, but to review the year that just ended. It's been a busy one, full of challenges, learning moments, and successes.

Here they are, in no particular order...

~Covers~

I've been on a fast track to learning how to create covers that are genre-appropriate and visually appealing. Some still give me pause, and I'll either figure them out or farm them out. My research for each cover usually begins with the top 100 on Amazon. After all, covers are about feeding reader expectations, rather than reproducing the characters or storyline exactly. And the best way to feed reader expectations is to give them a cover that mirrors what they expect from that specific genre. This took a while for me to figure out, mainly because it goes against my innate wish to be different from the rest.

~Translations~

Using DeepL, I have translated all 17 of my books into eleven languages. I'm not sure if I will use them all, trying to wrap my brain around Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic and Hindi is super-intimidating and I worry about making a mess of the manuscripts. But it will be a while before I tackle those since I have my hands full with just moving the books into Spanish, German, French, Italian and Dutch. That will likely take me all year to do! The process is complicated - first I run the translated manuscript through an AI to evaluate if there are any changes or tweaks that need to be made, book covers (both ebook and paperback) must be designed, metadata assembled, the manuscripts formatted, and more, before the consuming process of uploading each book to all applicable booksellers begins. It's a lot to deal with.

It also remains to be seen how good the translations are. But between DeepL translating, and a completely separate AI evaluating, I hope to catch most issues with the translations. I already had my Spanish manuscripts up for most of my books on Amazon and saw a review come through for La Tormenta (The Storm) that read "Buenisimo!" so it sounds like it's doing relatively well.

On New Year's Eve I finished the final uploads for the Spanish translations in hardcover to Ingram Spark. This company distributes to bookstores and libraries throughout the world, but I especially wanted English and Spanish there since there is plenty of a bilingual audience here and plenty of libraries whose local populations read exclusively in Spanish. I'm not sure I'll do Ingram for the rest of the translations, though, just Spanish and English.

~Writing~

I finished two books this year and wrapped up the Gliese 581g series. The last two books are live everywhere! It felt really good to get this series wrapped up and two more books out into the world. I've been writing and self-publishing since 2008 - 17 years and 17 books.

The stars are aligning, however, and I have plans for four, possibly even six books per year moving forward. More on how and why below under Renovations.

~Author Events~

Attended over a dozen author events - and learned which ones I want to sell my books at next year, and which I don't think is worth my time. The Boozy Book Fair was probably my biggest success points and I hope to get in with them again. Other than that, I'll likely stay behind the scenes - writing, finishing those audio edits, and tossing up the translations as time allows.

~Reading~

As Stephen King wrote in On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, "If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot." I've read over 65 books this year - mostly thrillers

~Audiobooks~

Refined my book production process to include narrating audiobooks which also helps with editing. There's nothing quite like reading something out loud to catch the awkwardly worded sentences and phrases, and to catch the last little weirdnesses that grammar checks cannot.

I want all of my audiobooks in my voice as well. To that end, I've narrated a total of eight books, and edited and uploaded six of them.

~Website Improvements~

Refined my website to include dynamic pages - not to nerd out or anything, but they make adding new books into the mix a breeze! I can't wait to finish them, and the short stories, for everyone to enjoy!

I moved away from Shopify and focused instead on building my Wix store where you can purchase all of my books in ebook format and any of the audiobooks I've completed. Just click on Shop tab above. You can search by language, ebook, or audiobook. Eventually, I may expand to include merchandise on the site. We'll see.

~Renovations~

We (my husband and I) are nearly finished the renovations needed to turn Cottage East into an Airbnb. What does this have to do with writing? Well, pretty much everything.

Having this separate stream of rental income coming in will help put my mind at ease about our finances. Which will then allow me to focus all of my creative energy on writing more books. This is HUGE for me. It really is. And with my focus where it needs to be, the act of creating more books each year will become a reality that I'm really looking forward to!

~Pool~

While this has nothing to do with creative work, it also has everything to do with creative work in general.

You know the saying, "All work and no play..."? Well, it's true.

I managed to make MVP in 8ball this year, and move up in ranking, although that continues to fluctuate. And what really makes me happy is that my teammates on both teams now see me as capable and a fairly reliable shooter (we all have our good and bad days!).

On New Year's, despite having a miserable head cold, I headed out to join my teammates as we did our best to qualify for Tricup in mid-January. I asked them all first if they were okay with me being there, because honestly I would have felt awful if I got anyone sick with this cold without warning them first. And thanks to some very strong cold meds, I was actually feeling rather chipper. At least for a couple of hours.

There's something about the game, the competition, the camaraderie, that just refills the well. I spend so much of my life inside (especially in winter), at my computer, pecking away at the keys. It's lovely to get out, shoot pool, and just get away for a while. It definitely rejuvenates me. So that's why I say that while it has nothing to do with creative work, it truly does have everything to do with it at the same time.

~Travel~

In April, I visited Ireland, saw amazing sites, thought of a great story idea while visiting the paleolithic burial mounds at Knowth and Newgrange, and even got a tattoo inspired by some of the stone carvings!

I also stayed for a week at The Writer's Colony in Eureka Springs, Arkansas and came up with an idea for an oracle card project I might pursue in 2026.

That's all of my look back, folks. I'm still battling the head cold, and plodding along through website edits and Cottage East renovations. I hope to have both projects done soon!