What a difference four years makes.
In January 2015, my writing portfolio consisted, by and large, of posts written for a few nonfiction websites. I’d been writing for the Nintendo fansite Nintendojo off and on for years, and I’d also chipped in a few posts for the mom blog Mumbling Mommy.
I had precisely zero websites of my own and no dedicated author presence anywhere on the Internet.
Starting in 2015, things began to change. I was finishing up a rewrite of a long-dormant novel, and, with an eye toward the future, my author website went up in early that year. Around that same time, I started pitching a fiction manuscript — what would eventually be Edge of Oblivion — to publishers. In May, I was thrilled to sign a three-book contract with Enclave Publishing to publish the Chronicles of Sarco series, and I even began writing a short story (the first of several) to go along with it.
The last three years have been, to put it politely, crazy. In 2016, my debut novel, Edge of Oblivion, released and my wife and I started a blog about Aldi. In 2017, as Aldi Reviewer continue to grow (and spur on a book of its own), a series of hiccups on the publishing front almost derailed the Sarco trilogy. But in 2018, the publishing ship stabilized, both Into the Void and Through Chaos released, and my wife and I even found time to pilot (and repilot) yet another new site, this one about living wisely.
Four years, three novels, five short stories, one nonfiction book, several websites, and a multitude of other short pieces later, I now find myself asking … what do I write next?
On the nonfiction front, some of that has already been laid out. My wife and I will continue to pour content into the two websites we manage, and look for new ways to bring those stories to the wider world. We have plans to experiment with some new channels for those sites, and we’ve also discussed revising and updating our book on Aldi, to say nothing of other possible nonfiction pursuits we might take.
On the question of fiction … well, that road is yet to be discovered, although I have some ideas. I can say with confidence that, for now, that the Sarco series has closed. It doesn’t mean that I won’t write in the Sarcoverse again. I may, and I even have some ideas on how I might go about doing just that. But at this time, I’m not currently writing in that series, either in the short story or novel form.
Instead, I’m currently working on another fiction project. I’ve been working on it for some time, and I’ve continued to draft it even as I’ve juggled my other writing projects. It presently sits at close to 90,000 words, and while it’s not done yet, I’m getting closer. I don’t have a timetable yet on its completion, or where it will go once I’m done.
But I am writing.