2023 Wrap Up

I wasn’t doing a good job blogging regularly. I said I was going to do it more frequently, and then I’d burn out and forget it for a month. More recently, I committed to just every other week on Sunday nights. I didn’t realize at that time that schedule would put me squarely on New Year’s Eve, but I think it’s pretty fitting. So, with serendipity at my back, I’m going to try and sum up what has been an insane year.

First and foremost, I published a book. That was the big thing. I was under contract and working on editing in 2022, but the bulk of the work, the build-up, and the actual publishing happened in 2023, so here it is. Mattson Academy, the story I’ve spent the last seven years working on, came out into the world on 9/5/2023, and I could not be more happy. Now, with the lead unburied, let’s back it up.

I read books this year. I didn’t keep count, and I’m not going to list them all, but I don’t think you can be a particularly good writer without doing some reading (also I happen to enjoy it). I started with the Mistborn Trilogy by Brandon Sanderson. I picked up a few other YA and fantasy novels over the year like All of Us Villains (and I started its sequel All of Our Demise), The Grimrose Girls, Vicious, and most recently Legends and Lattes—which I destroyed in just a few days.

I read much differently than I used to. For starters, I read a little less. Time that might have been spent reading is now split between reading and writing. I also read much more analytically. I used to just read and enjoy (or not). Now I’m more aware of structure, pacing, use of prose. I see descriptions for physical features or actions and I think, Man, that’s a good way to put that. It’s a weird thing, because now that I’m writing as seriously as I am, I don’t think I can ever go back to just reading.

2023 was also the year of my social media explosion. I mean that in terms of mostly how much social media I was putting out, not necessarily how popular it was. I’ve been on Twitter for a few years and I felt like I was doing ok there, but with the book about to be published, I needed to get the word out in as many ways to as many people as possible, so I added this website, TikTok, and Instagram to my repertoire of content output.

I’m very fortunate that my wife is able to help me with this site, because I’m clueless, and, as I mentioned above, I get burned out easily on these sorts of things. I started writing because I like writing. A) I was never sure I’d get published anyway, and B) I hoped the marketing stuff would just sort itself out and happen magically.

Clearly, that’s not the case, but I’m out here doing my best. Hopefully that’s enough, and I’m going to try and be both more creative and more consistent in the new year.

This was a great year for video games for me too. Games often get in the way of my writing and drawing and other more productive pursuits, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. Video games have been a big part of my life since I was a kid, and I originally wanted to be a game designer (though I’ve since realized I just wanted to tell stories and they were the medium I thought I could best do that).

Marvel Snap, being on my phone, probably takes the title of most played game, and I do very much enjoy it. I used to play Hearthstone, and I’ve always played card games like Pokémon and Magic the Gathering, and it feels like a very distilled version of that experience. I also got to relive my childhood with Sea of Stars, an homage to some of the greatest SNES RPGs I grew up with, and then the Mario RPG Remake, a literal remake of one of the greatest SNES RPGs I grew up with.

It wasn’t all indoors and digital stuff this year. I traveled, too. I spent a week with my family in Tennessee hiking the Great Smoky Mountains. We probably hiked more than I’ve ever hiked in my life and honestly it was up there for some of the best sights I’ve ever seen. We also spent a week at the beach where we saw dolphins almost every day. It wasn’t a new beach, but it’s one of my favorite places to be and I tore through some books and got some good sketches done while I was there.

I’ve been to three weddings this year. That’s a lot of exposure to extended family. Fortunately, I like my extended family. It particularly helps that they’ve all been excited and supportive of my writing journey this year, although, to be perfectly honest, talking about my book and myself that much was exhausting. It’s the same reason I have trouble blogging, or TikToking, or marketing of any kind. Still, it was great to be there to support family on their special days, and they were all wonderful parties.

If this all seems kind of rambly, it’s because I allowed myself to ramble. I could have written tons and tons about any one of these things, or all of them. Hell, I could have probably written a book about my 2023. Trying to wrap up a whole year in a blog post seems a bit insane, but this has been an insane year.

This year, I officially and irreversibly went from writing hobbyist to professional published author. Next year, I have another book coming out. After that, who knows? But for now, I’m going to enjoy the remains of 2023 by watching a terribly awesome movie with my family and thinking about the next book I want to write.

Happy New Year!