Saturday, May 2, 2015

Writing Year 2014 to 2015 - A Recap

by
Scott D. Parker

Last year, I wrote a couple of posts about a thing I called the Writer's New Year. In one, I mulled over the quotation "A year from now, you may have wished you had started today." The other post was specifically about the Writing New Year's Day. That's the day, if you have one, when you decided you wanted to be a writer and you started.

1 May 2013 was that date for me. I took stock of the 2013-2014 year last May. Today is the update on all the events that have happened from 1 May 2014 to yesterday. It can be summed up in one phrase: I got published!

In order to do that, of course, I formed my own company, Quadrant Fiction Studio. Those events, in an of themselves, are causes for celebration.

What makes the Writer's New Year's Day special is that the story I started on 1 May 2013 turned out to be WADING INTO WAR, the debut book from QFS.

Other things I've done since last year was write the third Benjamin Wade story, a novel featuring a modern-day character, Derek Foley, and a longer novella, that will be out later this month. I've got a title for that one: THE PHANTOM AUTOMOBILES. Look for a cover reveal in the next week or two. I've also completed a story that will appear in a forthcoming anthology. Not sure of the word count of all of this, about 130,000. As much as word count was a strong motivating factor in 2013, in 2014, it was all about completed projects.

But forming a company and publishing a book independently is a big deal. I never expected it to take as much time as it has so far. Oh, and I had to learn enough web stuff to make two websites.

So this year has been good for me. What's in store for next year, the 2015-2016 edition? Well, write more books and publish them. I’ll admit that my productivity in this first third of 2015 has not been what I envisioned, but I’m working on that. Improve the quality of my writing and improve the quality of my business. And, hopefully, attend my first Bouchercon. Lastly, I want to experiment with some things, try something out of my comfort zone. The story I wrote for the anthology was like that and it forced me to think outside my usual mystery-story box.

I have big ideas for Quadrant Fiction Studio for this year and future years, and the year 2015 will be the foundation. I look forward to this post next year.


BTW, today is Free Comic Book Day. If you are of a mind, find your nearest store and go support them. I like two here in Houston: Third Planet (for over 30 years!) and the good folks over at The Pop Culture Company.


Oh, and May the Fourth Be With You.

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