2023: A Writing Rearview Review

Well, 2023 is in the books, and as writing years go, it wasn’t all I hoped it would be. Though not a complete failure by any means, 2023 was nowhere near as productive as years past. This is largely due to a focus on querying my novel SECOND DAWN, which ate into both writing and submission time far more than I expected. Still, there were some bright spots to 2023, primarily what I learned and can take into 2024 to make it a more productive year. Below, I’ll cover the broad strokes of the major areas of my writings/publishing endeavors in 2023. Let’s get into it.

Short Story Submissions

Here are the raw numbers for my short story submissions in 2023.

• Submissions: 38
• Acceptances: 3
• Rejections: 31
• Pending: 4
• Published: 7

Ugh, right? I haven’t done a year-by-year comparison, but I think this is my worst year in both number of submissions and number of acceptances since 2012. A lot of this has to do with a lack of new material, and most of the rejected stories are those that have been in the trenches for a long time. I still have a lot of faith in some of these stories, but holy shit are they taking a long time to sell. As far as my acceptance percentage, it’s just under 10% if you don’t count pending subs, and a measly 8% if you do. Yuck. This is an area I definitely want to improve in the coming year.

I did manage to publish seven new stories, some of which were accepted in 2022. Here are links to the ones free to read or listen to online.

1. “Coffee Fiend” published by Factor Four Magazine.
2. “Reporting for Duty” published by Flash Point SF.
3. “Hell to Pay – Installment Plans Available!” published by Tales to Terrify.
4. “When Gods Walk” published by Radon Journal.
5. “Brave New Apocalypse” Factor Four Magazine. 

Novel Queries

Last June, I started querying my novel SECOND DAWN. It was my first attempt at querying a novel, and I learned a lot, even if those lessons were somewhat painful. Let’s start with the numbers.

• Queries: 53
• Full Manuscript Requests: 3
• Rejections: 34
• Closed No Response: 19

Technically, one of the FMRs is still awaiting reply, and I won’t officially mark it as a CNR for another week or so. That said, based on other FMRs sent to the same agents, I’m pretty sure I won’t hear back on this one. I’m going to do a full breakdown on my first querying experience later this month, but here’s the broad strokes. I researched around 150 agents and queried 53 of them. I received three FMRs in fairly short order, and, perhaps foolishly, I got my hopes up. While I expected CNRs on basic queries, I naively expected full manuscript requests would always result in some kind of response. Sadly, this is not the case, and when I start querying my next book, I’ll treat FMRs with a little more caution.

It wasn’t all bad news with queries, though. The FMRs tell me I can put together a decent query package, and with what I learned in 2023, my query package will only get better. Additionally, I know a lot more about the agents I want to query and those I should avoid (not because they’re not good agents, but just because my style and subject matter isn’t a good match).

Freelance Work

The bulk of my actual writing in 2023 was on freelance projects, primarily for Privateer Press. I wrote/published a novels-length of words of Iron Kingdoms fiction for the latest version of the tabletop miniature game WARMACHINE. Generally, this fiction is a steampunk-esque fantasy adventure, but this last year there was an opportunity to add a horror element to the setting, and that was REALLY fun. Anyway, here’s a quick recap of the work I did here.

• Novellas: 2
• Articles: 7
• Short Stories: 6

I’ve already signed contracts for more Iron Kingdoms stories and articles in 2024, and I’m looking forward to diving back into the land of warcasters and warjacks in the coming year.

Trials & Tribulations

Although I certainly wasn’t idle this last year, and I took some clear steps forward in pursuit of an agent and publishing deal, the pervasive feeling was one of spinning my wheels. I think this is largely due to the fact that I spent so much time in the querying process–both in the writing and refining of my query package and the actual queries themselves–and I feel like I didn’t get anywhere. Now, that’s not actually true, of course. I did receive three full manuscript requests from prominent agents, and I certainly learned a lot about the querying process. Still, I won’t sugar-coat it; querying is a real motherfucker that can quickly erode your confidence if you let it.

I also struggled a bit with what some folks might call writer’s block. I’m not a big fan of the term because I think it doesn’t accurately represent what, for me, was largely a dearth of creativity. It’s not that I couldn’t write or even that I couldn’t write publishable material, it’s was just very difficult getting started and even more difficult to get into the so-called groove. I think much of this stems from simple burnout. I’ve spent that last decade fighting the good fight, pushing my work out there, weathering rejections, and for the most part I’ve rolled with punches. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t a little more affected by my setbacks in 2023 than in other years. So what does that mean? Well, it means I need to get back into some good habits that tend to recharge the ol’ creative batteries, and first among those is reading. I don’t think I finished more than a dozen books in 2023 and that, for a writer, is unconscionable. So, in 2024 I want to get back on the reading train and not just in my genre. I’ve already got three new novels on my kindle–one horror, one crime/mystery, and one sci-fi–and I’m looking forward in losing myself in someone else’s creation for a bit.

Goals

I’m not gonna go crazy setting grandiose goals for myself in the coming year, but there are a few things I want to get done in 2024.

1) Finish revising and query my horror/thriller novel Hell to Play. This book just needs some fairly light revision and it’ll be ready to query. I think in a lot of ways it’s a more marketable book than the one I queried in 2023, Second Dawn. Comps are more obvious and the tone and subject matter is more indicative of my usual writing style. There are no guarantees, of course, but I think I stand a better chance of landing an agent with this one.

2) Write and submit more short stories. A perennial goal, but this time I’m not gonna shoot for a specific number. I simply want to write and submit more, and that’s enough.

3) Read, read, read. A lot of folks set out to read 100 books a year, but, like with short story subs, I’m not going to shoot for a specific number. I’m just going to commit more time to reading and focus on discovering new authors and maybe even new genres.

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And that was my 2023. Some ups and some downs, but I think the best way for me to look at 2023 is as a growth year. Growth can be painful, but ultimately it’s a good thing, and that’s where I’ll sign off. 🙂