Most of the folks I follow on YouTube have done their usual takes on the previous year and what was good and bad. I decided to come at such a thing from a more personal point of view because I had a really mixed 2023.
I'll start with the bad first.
The Harem Nights omnibus was released in February and should have been something to celebrate. But the narrator took much longer than expected, and that was partly my fault. I gave the guy the best part of a year to do it because I wasn't too bothered about the whole thing and as it later turned out, mistakes were still in the manuscript that I had missed. What I didn't expect him to do was take most of the year to record it. At one point I was sure he had ghosted me. Eventually, the audiobook came out and I ended up filing it away as a loss, but more on this later. I should pause here and ask that please, nobody contact him about this. I don't want an argument of any kind here.
My faith in crowdfunded comics took a major dent and I have become much more strict on what I'll back. Why? Books Like Cyberfrog Rekt Planet and Peregrine: Wings of the Falcon arrived massively late, around two to three years overdue. While I read Peregrine out of a morbid curiosity, Cyberfrog is still in its box and I don't know if I'll ever read it. There are other books I backed that are still massively late, and I have a growing pile of ones I'm going to sell. It's also become apparent to me that certain creators have treated backers as pay pigs by sitting on their money, doing stupidly long live streams, or going after people on Twitter (I'm not calling it X) instead of doing their work. I hate that and simply will not support such behaviour.
Finally, I got made redundant at the end of last year from my job. Three days before Christmas, to be exact. I took it as best I could and I was sad to go. It was ultimately closing a chapter on seventeen years of my life and I wished it would have been handled better by the company, but the atmosphere in the place as my final days approached made me glad to get out. I start a new job soon and am looking forward to it but I will admit, I'm a little weary.
Now for the good.
The audiobook for Escape from Crescendo Station One was released, narrated by Candace Roman, who had previously narrated Ataris Station for me. Despite EfCSO not being my most successful book, it is still my favourite to this day. Candace did a wonderful job narrating the book, especially when she added background music for the more tense or action scenes. The story became much more dear to my heart after that, and I owe her a lot for it.
While the Harem Nights audiobook came out and was a bad experience for me, it sold really well. I had come up with an outline for a harem story crossed with LitRPG but I couldn't get it to work, so I forgot about it. The previously mentioned sales made me look at it again and see what wasn't working, namely the LitRPG part, so I ripped it out and wrote the book, but at a much slower pace than usual as I fleshed the story out. Edie Skye was even kind enough to give me a front cover blurb for it.
That book was Detective in Mind.
It became my best-selling book and my most critically reviewed. It was one hell of a way to end 2023, released before my redundancy, but providing some cash after it to see me through December and the start of January. At the time of writing this, I am working on the sequel to DiM, a book I plan on making into a series.
What about the future?
I am also considering breaking into audiobook narration of my own works. The money from my redundancy will certainly cover the costs of the equipment, I just need to do my research on the rest of it. I don't know of many other authors who do this, and it also gives me something to really get my teeth into.
Will it work out? Time will tell, but I am full of confidence about it. Bring on 2024.
