All, thank you for the support. Things have been progressing well. The first draft of ’State of Decay’ is now heading towards the final act, which will be a battle between good and evil. Well, of course it will be - what else did you expect! I’ve also been honing the opening third a bit to better define the various characters and ensure they feel individual. 

Alex

Well friends, it’s time to wrap up my first year as a published author. Considering Tantalus Depths only came out a bit over three months ago, we sure crammed a lot into the tail end of this year.

We began this month with GalaxyCon in Columbus, which was an absolutely magical experience from beginning to end. I met so many amazing people, and was able to introduce Tantalus Depths to a whole new audience. I’d never been to a convention before, even as an attendee, but I always knew it would be something I’d love, and I was not mistaken. I made some new friends there, learned a lot about the business end of things, got to socialize with other authors, and even had one person recognize my book from an Audible recommendation after listening to Project Hail Mary! That’s right. Someone recognized my book in the wild because an algorithm compared it to Andy Weir’s writing. You could have knocked me over with a neutrino after that one.

I’ve spent the rest of the month making plans for the new year, and let me tell you, I have some big ones. I’m going to do a LOT more conventions next year, along with some other events. I’ve already lined some of them up, so expect a proper event schedule announcement for my 2023 Book Tour very soon.

With New Years being a time for resolutions, I want to share with you my goals as an author for 2023. I’m famously bad at adhering to timelines, but I’m hoping some public accountability will help keep me on track. I have three main goals for the year; all three ambitious as well as important.

1: Get Tantalus Depths up to 50 reviews on Amazon (if y’all want to help out with that one I sure wouldn’t mind)

2: Attend at least ten promotional events (hopefully many more than that)

3: Write and submit Proteus to my publisher. Tantalus Depths took eight years from writing the first word to publication day. I don’t want Proteus to take longer than three at the most.

Those are most of my big plans for the year, but I also have a bunch of other surprises coming up. My fifth short story, Neurophage, will be coming out this year in Writing Bloc’s next anthology collection, Passageways: Mythos. I also have a guest appearance coming up on a wonderful authors’ podcast later this year, which I’ll tell you more about when it gets closer.

All in all, 2023 is looking to be a really big year, and I cannot wait to share my experiences with you all. Have a happy New Year, everyone, and get ready for a wild ride!