Yearly Look Ahead - 2024
Another year down, another set of books on the shelf, and a fresh canvas before us. Which can only mean it’s time for the Yearly Look Ahead of 2024.
Formerly my Yearly Wrapup, this is where I go over all the goals and planned projects that are going to be officially announced for the year. Not everything here will see publication by the end of December, as some of it is about things I’m working on, but these are all the most relevant projects to discuss for the coming twelve months.
Before we look to the future though, let’s take a moment to enjoy all that got done in 2023. We saw the publication of the first Villains’ Vignettes installment, along with the audio release of 5-Minute Sherlock #3: The Case of the Felonious Faire. I attended my first romance convention at Readers Take Denver, which I’ll be returning to for 2024! And speaking of returning to cons, I once again got to be at Dragon Con in 2023, and will be again for 2024.
2023 was also the year that Shingles: The Movie released, the first time one of my stories has been put upon the silver screen. Check it out if you like comedic horror, but be aware that my story is only one of the segments, and the rest are pretty maturely themed. I also have to add that sitting in the audience at A&D Con Portland, listening to people laugh as we screened this film, was an awesome experience.
Sadly, A&D Con Portland marked likely the last of the in-person A&D Cons for the foreseeable future. Much as we love putting them on, post-Covid the con scene has gotten wildly pricier, and as things stand there was just no way to make it work without charging more for tickets than felt appropriate. That said, A&D con will live on, and I’ll get into details there once we reach the goal section.
Which hey, we’re pretty much at!
Just in case anyone is new to these blogs, I like to post goals around New Years rather than resolutions, and a good majority of them center around writing, as it’s both my passion and my career.
And damn, it wasn’t until I started putting everything together that I realized how densely packed 2024 is going to be!
1. Publish Villains’ Code #3: Figured we may as well start with the most obvious ones and work our way down. As the project that took up pretty much my entire 2023, I am overjoyed to say that Villains’ Code #3 is finally nearing the end. As this post goes up I’m reaching the Epilogue, so a rough draft will be done soon, and then it’s onto edits.
As a reminder for folks who missed last year’s releases, if you haven’t read Villains’ Vignettes: Volume I, there are going to be some fairly confusing aspects of Book #3.
2. Publish 5-Minute Sherlock #3 in print and ebook: For those who aren’t familiar with Audible Originals, these are books made with Audible as the publisher, where the audio version comes first, with print and ebook following roughly half a year later. Since The Case of the Felonious Faire released in December, expect to see this one around summer.
3. Write and Publish Fred the Vampire Accountant #9… the final Fred book: This one got pushed from 2023 since Villains’ Code ran so tremendously over expectation (surprise, surprise), but it’s the next project on my docket to tackle, so I feel very confident this one will be out in 2024.
And yes, you read the title there right, this will indeed be the finale of the Fred the Vampire Accountant series. It’s been a long journey, and while we’ve nearly reached the end there’s still a fait bit of adventure in store for Fred and the gang. I hope you enjoy the conclusion to come.
4. Publish A Decade of Death and Decisions: This is the Halloween story that ran on my site for a decade, now properly edited and packaged together into an true novel. And I’m happy to announce that there will be an audiobook version of this one. My plan is to release around October of 2024, but that might shift around depending on how all the other stuff plays out, because guess what, we still aren’t done!
5. Publish a year of Patreon Content: In case you my big announcement a few months ago, I have officially started doing some serial content once again. Posts go up every Tuesday and Thursday, and it comes with access to my Discord as well. Fulfilling my weekly promise almost goes without saying, but never missing an update is a goal I intend to honor, so it felt appropriate enough to warrant an entry.
6. Debut the Roverpowered series:
“Aspiring alchemist Wanda and her faithful familiar Wumble take on the world in this classic tale of friendship, adventure, and an unstoppable dog with world-shaking power.”
As my first effort at writing something suitable for a younger audience (meaning there’s finally a Drew Hayes book without any swear words) and the first series I’ve partnered with a publishing company for in many years, I am beyond excited about this one! While the stories here will be shorter, installments will also come more frequently. I can’t speak to the publication dates here yet as that’s in Aethon’s hands, but my intent is write at least two of these per year, more if time allows.
7. Work on the Super Powereds webcomic: In case anyone missed that announcement earlier in the year, Super Powereds is being adapted into a webcomic! Although I would be surprised if this one was released in 2024, I do expect a lot of development to happen through the year and I am so thrilled to see how it goes. I’ll share what I can as progress moves along, I know a lot of you are just as eager as me to see Super Powereds in a another medium.
8. Hold an Authors & Dragons Digital Convention: While the physical realm might be beyond us, the Authors & Dragons crew has gotten practice doing digital events from during the lockdown days. Our goal is to take what we learned from our older online events and put together something even better. It won’t quite be the same as our classic con, but then again this one won’t come with airlines and hotel costs, so it’s not all bad.
9. TV/Movie Deal: This has been on the list since the lists started, and originally it was meant as bit of a ridiculous potshot goal to shoot for. And truth be told, that’s about where we still are, though if nothing else the Shingles movie demonstrated just how much is possible from simply going for it. So I’m keeping this one on here, because hey… you never know.
I hope all of you out there are having a great 2024 so far. As always, feel free to share your own goals for the year ahead in the comments or on our Discord.