No matter how you slice it, 2023 was a good year for me. But the way I know that is not simply my accomplishing several tasks, it’s my hungering for 2024. At the close of 2022, I was buzzing with anticipation. I had worked so hard on Chick Magnet and Funny Guy, they were finally going to see the light of day.
The sun has risen and set on them now. I love these books. I love what they taught me and how I had to grow to write them and revise them and market them. But what I’ll always be most grateful to them for is that they helped me see the future. They weren’t the highest mountain, it turns out, but having climbed this hill, I can see it now, in the distance. I just have to keep going.
Let’s look back first, though.
In 2023, I:
- Promoted and released Chick Magnet. Some people liked it, and it ended up on the New York Times’s list of the best romances of the first part of 2023.
- Promoted and released Funny Guy. Some people liked it (I got my first starred trade review!), and some people hated it. But while I know that Sam wasn’t the hero people expected from me, I had to stretch to write this book, and I believe in it fervently.
- Wrote a 10K bonus epilogue for Funny Guy called Becoming Us.
- Wrote 25K for the conspiracy book, an unsold, secret project. It’s up to 51K now.
- Then my editor at Montlake asked if I would like to write not one but TWO more books for them (deal announcement here), and I joyfully agreed. I spent the rest of the summer writing the book that now’s called Bad Reputation and then the autumn revising it. It weighs in at….92K. WHAT?? Yes, by a substantial margin, it’s the longest book I’ve ever written. You’ll understand why when you read it. It has a preorder page and a release date: October 8, 2024. The cover and back cover copy are forthcoming.
- Read 61 new-to-me books, and I hope to fit a few more in before the end of the year.
In terms of my 2022 goals, I didn’t write two books: I wrote 1.25 of them plus some bonus material. But I’m north of 125K new words for the year, which is a solid one for me.
Looking ahead, I’m about to start writing the final book on my new Montlake contract, the codename for which is Sexy Chess. It’s wild to think that that project will be finished and revised before you’re reading Bad Reputation, but that’s the way it goes. After Sexy Chess, I want to finally finish the conspiracy book, and then I want to start writing a book that’s been brewing in my head for a while, one with the codename Broadway baby.
Can I write 2 books and finish a third next year? Probably not, but let’s find out! I’m keeping my reading goal at 52 new-to-me books, and this will finally be the year when I begin jogging again and/or establish a yoga habit (ha!). I’d like to keep playing piano regularly, I want to keep a reduced social media presence, and I want to continue feeling joy in my writing.
The coming year will be filled with hard work, but I’m hoping that it also has one or two opportunities tucked away, because I’m raring to find them.
(I’ve been producing some version of this post for as long as I’ve been blogging my writing. You can read about my 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, and 2013 respectively.)
Emma Barry 