I’ll be perfectly honest. 2018 did not turn out quite the way I planned. I wouldn’t say it was a bad year(how could I?), but it was full of surprises, twists, and it was certainly another year of change and growth (more than 2017). In the second half, I made some definitive changes that gave me intense focus and renewed energies, and in this, for the first time ever, I really wrote out a full, detailed and realistic plan for the end of this year and all of 2019.

     The thing is, and as has been developing for a long time, I’ve grown weary of writing in such minute detail about my work. In many respects, I feel it’s been a disservice to it. I think I believed it was a great way to promote my work, but now I feel more like the magician who tells you the trick he’s about to perform or who explains the magic after. The spell is broken. I’m highly analytical, detail-oriented, and thorough, so being succinct can be difficult for me.

     But with this mindset, I seem to have less and less interest in controlling my own narrative and “over saturating” social media and even my website with my presence (as it were). Show don’t tell, is the old writer’s adage, and that’s where my mind is now. I’d rather work and offer that work up to be enjoyed, interpreted, and discussed. Let others talk about it rather than me writing about it.

     So, I’m not certain what the format of my blog will be in 2019. I know it won’t be the same. Already I took a break from blogging this year,and when I came back to it, I decided to post once a month rather than every week, and it’s given me so much more time and energy to actually create things. Plus, I have an entirely new vision for how to market my work, and I’m hoping I’m on to something.

     That said, this may be one of the very last blog posts of this kind. Indeed sometimes a writer does need to tell rather than show, and there is a lot of new information which I think is fair to offer to all of you. But the changes you’re about to experience in 2019 and beyond I think you’re going to like. I know I do and am.

What Remains

There is outstanding work for 2018. Namely, my NaNoWriMo novel, The Kirklyn Horror and my Wonderland-themed Inktober collection. Neither were finished in their respective challenge months, but just because the challenge wasn’t complete, doesn’t mean the work has to end.

     I want to have a new Inktober sketchbook every year for the foreseeable future, and although my 2017 NaNoWriMo book was never finished (it was my first NaNoWriMo, and I planned poorly), I’ve worked very hard on The Kirklyn Horror, and I’m going to finish it, challenge or no. Plus, though it’s a prose novel, in it I play with themes and ideas that I’ve wanted to incorporate into the Chadhiyana series and my writing in general, but I’m getting to play with them on a smaller scale.

With these two works, I’m also preparing And They Call it Mummy Love: A Gentleman Cthulhu Collection and Creative Collections: J. M. DeSantis – The First Ten Years for publication in early 2019. The former is fully finished, actually, and available digitally on my Patreon page(patreon.com/jmdesantis), but it won’t release until January or February 2019.Around the same time the Creative Collection will release as well. That book is a novel-length collection of writing, art, and autobiographical information.

     That said, I don’t want to over-promise or get ahead of myself,but 2019 is looking good already and I’ve planned and am working on quite a lot for next year. And though I want to stop this constant writing about what I have going on, there is a lot of information and news that you should all know and expect for 2019.

     So, since this blog post is already very long, I’m going to post a second on Friday, 14 December 2018. This will be much longer and focus on 2019. Combined, these two posts will serve as my final posts for 2018 and hopefully set up and make known the changes and plans for the new year.

     So here we go…as 2018 comes to a close.

     Cheers!