Nine years old! My, how time flies!
How about I throw some stats your way?
Over the course of 2021, The Upstream Writer garnered a grand total of 17.2K views, and while a good portion of those came from the US, this blog has also been viewed in Japan, Germany, Sweden, France, Russia, Romania, the UK and Canada.
The latest post on the blog was my Upstream Update for Fall of 2021. During 2021 I happened to post my 900th blog post, which is the Clan of Outcasts, Season 3, Part 10. The most viewed post of 2021 was my Hit List of my Top 5 Favorite Young Actors. The post on my blog with the highest views of all time is the Fanfiction Friday post wherein I excerpted a Peter Pan fanfiction: "How Peter Pan Grew Up." It was meant to bridge the "plot gap" between 2003's adaptation of Peter Pan, and everybody's favorite classic, "Hook." How did the Boy-Who-Would-Never-Grow-Up become the stuffy, workaholic Peter Banning? I had fun answering that question... and apparently people enjoyed my answer!
As far as Accomplishments of 2021, I think a huge one was Finishing The First Draft of Fugitive of Crossway. Second only to that would probably be completing the mammoth serial Clan of Outcasts, Season 3. To put it into perspective, the first "season" of Clan of Outcasts" (at least, the first real story arc) was only about 13 parts. I transitioned into a second story arc, which became the second "season", and that ran for about 10 installments, plus a 3-part finale. All told it was around 80K words.
This Season 3, all by itself, ended up around 40 installments or so (if I'm counting the "part 1 of 2" installments as individual parts!) and OVER 172K words! That's more than double the other two "seasons" combined! I'm not surprised it took all year.
Speaking of all year, want to know how many words I wrote in 2021?
If I've done my math right, the total for 2021 was 307,913 words.
You'll notice from the chart that I didn't log any words in December. This is pretty much true, because my fall writing habits were so out of whack that I spent a good chunk of November "making up" for the lack of consistent writing in October, and then December was spent doing the same for November. I logged the words on the NaNoWriMo site, of course, but really, it was writing that "should have" happened in October, so it didn't actually "count" for November. I'm starting fresh here in January, though, so hopefully, I won't have to waste too much time playing "catch up" anymore!
A major highlight for January and February would probably be the trip I took to Hawaii. It was only the second time I'd ever been, and definitely the first time I'd been when it didn't rain the whole time! I think the thing I was also most excited about was actually going through and taking the opportunity to plot out the Tales for the rest of the series. It wasn't going to be so deliberate at first; I was just finding a way to incorporate the tie-in stories I had on hand for the first couple books. But for the last two, now I'm being more deliberate about it, and actually planning ahead for these stories as a way of expanding and exploring the world I've built.
A big accomplishment for this season: I found out after the fact that I'd been writing for about 400 days straight! There is a major sense of accomplishment in realizing you've built a habit you've always wanted but never thought you'd attain. In the spring, also, I enjoyed the release of a handful of interviews I'd done months prior--including a TV interview for a small network back East, which is available on YouTube! If you want to see more of these interviews, check out the Undersea Saga page--I have them all listed under the "Second Edition" of Princess of Undersea. (There were a handful of interviews I did with the first edition, those are listed first; you'll want to scroll past those)
Whew! I think the summer of '21 is marked the most by the heat wave that swept through in June! On the one hand, it being so warm meant that ostensibly we'd be spending a lot of time outside--but on the other, it also meant that our summer berries mostly fried right there on the bush, oftentimes before they were even ripe! I always love picking our blueberries, and I was really looking forward to it... but this year's harvest was abysmal.
Another highlight of this summer was the birth of a new niece--she's such a sweet, chubby, chatty thing now! This summer was also my first time reading Ruth Ware--I don't often start in on new authors, but this one came recommended, so I went for it, and very much enjoyed it!
And in the last update of 2021, I was able to announce that I'd finished the first draft of Fugitive of Crossway! It was also the return to full-time school hours, and infinitely more chaotic than anyone expected! In the midst of that, I went into NaNoWriMo hoping to have enough material to plunge right through and keep a steady flow, after spending so much time writing Clan of Outcasts Season 3 and Fugitive of Crossway--but alas! Work fatigue left me drained, and there wasn't quite enough preparation in place ahead of time to give me a good launching point, and so I "failed" NaNoWriMo for the first time since... basically the first year I started this blog! Now, that being said, a lot of people wouldn't consider 35K words in a month a "failure" but I just use that word in the sense that I didn't reach the standard 50K word goal.
The fun part of the last couple months of 2021, though, was the fact that I participated in a couple more short Blog Hops, one in November and one in December--so that was fun!
I did manage, also, to complete my 40-book reading goal, so that was a huge accomplishment for the year, I do believe.
Reading
Speaking of reading... Out of those 40 books, I wanted to list my Top 10 Mainstream Books! I am not including the indie titles--because you can already read how much I enjoyed all of those in the Reader's Reviews page!
And so, in no particular order:
Micro by Michael Crichton--I think this one is only the second-most creepiest Crichton book I ever read! (The title of "creepiest" currently held by Prey) It's like if Honey, I Shrunk the Kids was more of a horror/thriller film than a family-friendly sci-fi comedy film. Crichton is an absolute mastermind at building a sci-fi thriller with nothing more than the most "advanced" 80's technology. He was so precise with his writing that he could figure out how small to shrink the humans down so that their relative size compared to insects were adequate enough for the narrative! (Hence the creep factor--I dislike bugs or creepy-crawlies of any sort!)
One Good Deed by David Baldacci--I read this one in the midst of catching up with the Memory Man series (so good that it was almost included on this list!), as well as giving the Atlee Pine series another shot (fail... Did not enjoy; Baldacci is great with crime thrillers, but terrible at writing female main characters!) This one was a bit of a departure from his others, as it is set in the 40's as opposed to being a contemporary thriller. Still smacks of his admirable skill, though, as the main character Archer is compelling and the mysteries he faces are intriguing enough!
The Death of Mrs. Westaway by Ruth Ware--As I mentioned before, this was my first Ruth Ware book, picked up on a whim because I remembered a friend absolutely raving about it--and I must say, it was a very good first impression! Ware's style is definitely feminine enough to remind one of Agatha Christie, but the plot twists, the contemporary time period, and the intrigue are definitely more along the lines of Anthony Horowitz. Both are mystery authors I very much enjoy, and so I think I definitely see more Ruth Ware in my future!
Call Down The Hawk by Maggie Stiefvater--A friend once recommended The Raven Boys Cycle to me with the phrase "Everything Maggie Stiefvater writes is magical!" And having read several of her books, I cannot help but agree with that estimation. Call Down The Hawk is the first book in the Dreamer Trilogy, sort of a spin-off of the Raven Boys Cycle, focusing on the enigmatic Lynch brothers who were fascinating side characters in the Raven Boys series. Now that they're front and center, there's a lot more to be said about each one of them! And yes, it is every bit as magical as a Stiefvater book should be! The way she compels a reader's emotions and the poetic prose that enchants the mind is not something to be missed!
One Word Kill by Mark Lawrence--Speaking of enchanting prose... I confess I cannot resist a Mark Lawrence book when I find it. I'm lucky that there seems to be someone on the staff of my local library system (or perhaps there's a high volume of request from library patrons!) for his works, because they typically show up on library shelves a few months after release! This series, the Impossible Times Trilogy, is somewhat of a departure from his usual post-apocalyptic fantasy, given that it's more like a Stranger Things tribute, centering around a group of friends who bond over Dungeons and Dragons... but Lawrence throws things in like time travel, one of the characters facing a terminal illness, espionage... and each book deals with a specific spell slot used in the game, that comes into play over the course of the narrative, so that's cool! I very much enjoyed this book, as I've enjoyed every other Lawrence publication I've read so far!
Dead Beat by Jim Butcher--Yes, I'm still plugging away at the Dresden Files! And, just in case anyone is curious, this book is the one with the reanimated zombie dinosaur, so you're welcome! The neat thing is that I get the feeling that this is the part of the series that is dealing with humanizing Harry--things coming into his life that are rather mundane that he has to deal with, and he can't just while it away with magic. There was a lot more Bob in this one too--I always look forward to those moments when Bob can make an appearance, and boy does he ever appear in this story!
Shadowscale by Rachel Hartman--The sequel to Seraphina and it did not disappoint! In fact, I almost want to go back and read both books a little closer together, because there were some pertinent details that I definitely forgot, that may have helped me figure out the plot twist sooner! But as it was, a highly enjoyable adventure, full of creative methods of expanding the world and developing the characters to awesome lengths! This is truly a brilliant story, and I can't get enough of it!
Dire King by William Ritter--Yay! I finally finished a series! Dire King is the last book in the Jackaby series, and I've enjoyed the whole thing immensely! A rousing finale, full of characters developing into their actualized selves, questions answered, villains deposed, and a satisfying conclusion to the whole thing!
Conjuror by John and Carole Barrowman--I've wanted to read this series ever since I met them... heck, ever since I finished the Hollow Earth trilogy and found out there were more books! But it's been a bugbear of a time trying to get the first book in the series--and I'm so glad I finally did! The Barrowmans expand their world of Animare to include Conjurors, who instead of animating things that already exist, can use their skill with music to alter reality itself! So yes, there are a lot of music references, it's set largely against the backdrop of New Orleans, and I am utterly entranced!
Renegades by Marissa Meyer--Like Lawrence, I will absolutely read anything Marissa Meyer writes! Her fairy tale-based books, namely The Lunar Chronicles and Heartless--are fascinating enough, but now she tackles the superhero genre in spectacular fashion! An historic cataclysmic event reveals the existence of super-powered individuals known as Prodigies, and from among the Prodigies there arise two factions: the Renegades, who set themselves up as the authority and the ones who put the "hero" into "superhero", and the Anarchists, followers of Ace Anarchy who supposedly wanted more equality between Prodigies and "normies", but went about it in a rather violent and Renegade-resistant manner. The series centers on Nova, a Prodigy who originally fell in with the Anarchists, but who finds herself recruited by the Renegades. Caught between two worlds, Nova faces difficulty in finding a place where she can fit in--and the fact that the Renegades are bent on destroying the Anarchists who dared rise up against them and caused so much chaos doesn't help her chances much. I loved this book so much that I asked for the whole trilogy for my birthday, and I am currently reading the sequel!
Plans for 2022
Over these next few months, I fully intend to map out a second draft of Fugitive of Crossway, start writing it as soon as the plot is finished (so, whether that will be before or after the end of winter, remains to be seen!) and see if I can't get it down to a more reasonable length! If I succeed, then the next order of business will be to sort out a cover design and a formatter--now that I know that this is what I need once the draft is finished, I can be more on top of things this time around!
I'm also going to start posting Fairies Under Glass as the Serial Saturday series, probably as soon as this Saturday! Of course, once I start posting it, that means I'll have to do a lot of writing to keep up with it, so hopefully I can stay ahead of the posting schedule so I don't miss a week!
Hopefully by summer, I will have made enough progress with Fugitive of Crossway that I can actually go through the editing and formatting process to get it publish-ready--perhaps even for a winter release date, so that will be exciting!
Then in the fall, I'll start plotting and planning Book 3, so that by the time November rolls around, I'll be ready to commence the first draft of Fury of Outwest, and the whole process starts over again!
Of course, that will be the optimal outcome of all of this--but who knows if I'll be able to predict my own publishing schedule like that? One can only hope... It is my desire that you all will join me along this process, as I keep you updated, and as new developments occur. I hope I've given you enough to be excited about, things to look forward to, and, as always, as I forge ahead in my writing endeavors...
Catch You Further Upstream!
Previous Birthday Posts:
-2016
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-2020