Happy Holidays!

It’s hard to believe it’s that time of year again. 2018 flew by. It seems like it was just yesterday that I was reflecting back on 2017 and coming up with new goals for 2018.

Now that I’m reflecting on 2018 and coming up with new goals for the new year, I can proudly say that I’ve reached just about all my goals for this past year. One of those goals was to write and publish five full-length novels – and, as of today, I can say that I reached that goal.

It didn’t happen exactly as planned, but few things do. Originally, I planned on writing and publishing five sci-fi and fantasy novels: the three short Bloodfeast books and two longer standalones.

Well, I got the Bloodfeast Trilogy done but didn’t write two sci-fi and fantasy standalone novels: I only wrote and published one. However, I did write and publish one other novel under the pen name I was using before creating Ellis Michaels.

The full-length standalone science fiction novel that I wrote and published just came out today. After six months of writing, editing, and nearly losing the manuscript to a faulty hard drive, Ordinary Hero is finally out and I couldn’t be more relieved!

I worked harder on this book than on any other that I’ve written so far. It’s my longest book and took more time to write than any of the others. And publishing Ordinary Hero has certainly been the most satisfying.

The question is: Where do I go from here? What do I write next? Over the next week or two, that’s what I’ll be figuring out. I have a few fresh ideas floating around in my head (and dozens of others written down) and I’ll be picking one to develop into my next novel.

In 2019, I think I’m going to set the goal of writing and publishing three full-length standalone novels. I think that’s a realistic yet somewhat-ambitious goal. I’ll also be spending a lot of time improving my craft: reading books about writing, reading other sci-fi and fantasy books, networking with other authors, communicating with readers, and other authorly activities.

This writing adventure has been a wild ride so far and it’s only just beginning. I started writing professionally in 2014 and only started writing fiction in 2016. In that time, I feel like I’ve made tons of progress but know that there’s a lot more to be made in the coming years.

I want to take this writing thing as far as I can. If I continue to work on my writing and myself, constantly trying to improve, there’s no limit to where things might go. I can’t wait to see what the coming year will bring and then the years after that.

If you’ve already picked up Ordinary Hero, thank you. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. Though it took a lot of work and there were a lot of ups and downs, overall, writing Ordinary Hero was a lot of fun.

And I hope you enjoy the holidays. Whether you’re Christian, Jewish, Muslim, atheist, or something else, I sincerely hope you have a great holiday season and a Happy New Year!