Looking Back at a Year of Prose and Context

Sixty-four posts, dozens of books, hundreds of hours, too many en dashes

A Year 🎉🎉

Isn't that surreal? When I began writing here in December of last year, it was with a tempestuous mixture of giddiness and trepidation:

Giddiness because I had found a place to share my fascination with speculative fiction and talk through the lessons I saw in it, and because I had previously vaguely believed that doing something like this would require at least a Masters or Doctorate in the field.

Trepidation because it was a creative project I was passionate about, and my road with ADHD (pre- and post-diagnosis) is littered with the guilt-ridden detritus of exactly those types of endeavours. Having this fall by the wayside as well felt like a dire risk.

So my New Year's Resolution for 2024 was to post [anything I could] once a week. At that point, with 3-4 real articles under my belt, just the idea of having 4 more done by the end of January felt like it would be an incredible achievement; let alone looking back on 52. I don't think it's any coincidence that my first post of the year opened with "Don't give up!"

Two posts from January 2024

And here we now are! A few things I've done in the past year:

• Discussed my love of two series – The Masquerade and The Locked Tomb – in simultaneously too much and too little detail

• Experimented with listicles – reflective and promotional

• Explored archetypes and representation across the genre – Vampires, Gay Characters, Lesbian Characters and Neopronouns

• Spent far too much time checking these stats:

Views on Medium, March-December 2024

Views on Substack, December 2023 - December 2024

No explosions through viral posts, just posting consistently and passionately while (more and more) trying to keep topics and titles relevant to current events and readers' day-to-day.

Lessons Learned

Passion does not guarantee readership, obviously. I was a little blind to that with one post in particular, which I felt great about but simply didn't have any draw to bring people in. I can think of half a dozen titles that would do much better but spoil the experience of the story; a delicate balance for any post.

In a similar vein, I've oscillated a lot this year in terms of how much I spoil the books I'm discussing. In past months I've leaned heavily into spoilers, because my goal is to discuss what makes these books great and the share the lessons I've taken from them. The opposite approach would just be book recommendations, which are ubiquitous online and which I already have something of a place for with my Starting Points posts.

Library, by MiloGreyStudio

Daunting though it can be, I’ve also learned to go and share my articles in online communities dedicated to the books in question; it’s rare that these fans will otherwise stumble on my work unless they’re already on Medium/Substack. (Though it’s strange to see my blog be among the first results when you google image search art for characters like Cairdine Farrier and Colonel Orhan.)

I’m also reducing the amount of AI art I use; now only for my Spotify playlists and characters with no previous art, like those above. In an ideal world I would commission these pieces, but that’s a universe away from sustainable right now.

In the past month I’ve also been pleasantly surprised to find that I can keep up with writing two posts per week! It’s a helpful reminder to take stock and change things up as needed over time.

Looking Ahead

Did you know I feature a book each month and do a couple-sentence recommendation of it? Probably not, since it's really only on my Instagram and Website. Part of my reasoning for increasing to two posts/week recently was to make full posts about my 'Pick of the Month,' but I didn't end up doing it for December for a couple reasons. You can find all my past picks here.

Winter's Orbit was my pick for December 2024

Would you be interested in seeing a full post (probably on the next Thursday/Sunday after the first of the month) for these, or to have it at least mentioned? I made a quick poll, shouldn't take more than ten seconds: https://strawpoll.com/B2ZB9WGQQgJ

I have many ideas for posts, specific and general, that will come to be sooner or later. (I’d like to try more short video content, discussing books like in my post on This is How You Lose the Time War.) My goal for 2024 is mainly just to continue with two posts per week, but also to explore and experiment as much as possible.

Thanks for reading and happy holidays! ❄️❤️