Why did January join a book club?

It wanted to start the year off on the right page!

Jan 01, 2025

Hello Friend,

Today I’m writing to you from my comfy living room, under a heated blanket, with the fireplace crackling. Come in, grab a warm seat, and let’s catch up.

Facts of Life

December was full of writing, baking, and socializing. In that order, too. I’ll get to the first part in the next section, so here’s what I baked over the holiday season!

Kiribath (Sri Lankan milk rice)

Purple sweet potato pie

Pumpkin pie

Chocolate ginger cookies (one of my top 5 favorite cookies!)

For a solid two weeks, I had the pleasure of seeing nearly every member of my family and spent time with tons of friends. The holiday season is always a busy one for my husband and I, and though it can drain my introverted energy, in the end spending time with loved ones refills my well. Quality time is my love language!

Progress Report

I made my deadline! *cue confetti*

Are they the right words? I don't know! But I am confident that they are nearly the right words. I ended up turning in an 88,714 word first draft. I thought it would be between 84,000 and 100,000 so I’m happy with the word count (it means the pacing is also probably nearly right). For those who are, like me, analytically inclined, here are my stats:

Brainstorming and outlining (i.e. taking the book from an idea to a story): 10 weeks

Drafting said ~89k words: 17 weeks

Light revision (to clean up things so it’s ready for someone to read): 1 week

That means it took me 28 weeks to go from an idea of a book to a first draft of a book. It’s readable! It has plot and character development and romance and banter and tension! But it’s not ready for the shelves yet. All of that stuff can be tweaked, deepened, honed. And that’s exactly what I intend to do with it over the next year.

While it’s in my editor’s hands, along with a couple trusted critique partners, I’m refilling my creative well by reading tons of books, watching tons of shows (mostly anime and k-dramas—why? because they tend to have solid romance and plot arcs, which feeds my id as well as teaches me more about storytelling craft), hanging out with friends, working out, cooking (stew and soup season is upon us and I have five new recipes I want to try out!), and sleeping! Yes, sleeping. As I get farther into a draft or begin a revision, I tend to sleep poorly. Which is something I also intend to work on this year.

Reflections and Intentions

2024 was a great year for me—I sold my first two books to a major publishing company! And because of that I was able to hit some career milestones, like:

working with an editor on my debut novel
seeing cover art for my debut novel
celebrating with family and friends that after 12 years and 9 books, I will be published and on shelves

My word for 2024 was Joy, and that came in so many ways. Of course, my first 2-book contract came first—in January no less! But after that, the entire process of editing, line-editing, copyediting, cover discussion, special features discussion, and working with an amazing social media maven has been an absolute joy. I also cannot forget that drafting Destiny was joyful. I knew at the turn of the year that I wanted to write this book, regardless of whether HER SOUL FOR A CROWN sold. I would’ve had to do more worldbuilding to introduce readers to the world of the Yakkas, but the core of the story and the characters involved wouldn’t have had to change much. And about a week before I was going to start working on it, my book deal came through.

I had three specific writing related goals for 2024.

draft Destiny
edit HSFAC in some way (I was considering self-publishing if traditional didn’t pan out)
figure out what to do with my middle grade science fantasy

As you know, I accomplished the first two, and I kind of accomplished the third. Since I’ve got two adult romantasy books coming out in the next two years (2025 and 2026), I’ve decided to hold off on jumping into the middle grade arena. I have two other adult romantasy ideas floating around in my head and I have yet to figure out how to draft more than one book a year, while editing another. Perhaps that’ll be a goal for 2026.

As for 2025, my word and intention is Enjoyment.

It’s my debut year! Which means that I will be hitting many more career milestones and I want to not only be intentionally present for them all, but I want to enjoy the time I have with them.

In terms of goals (I like to set concrete, attainable goals that are within my control. Things that aren’t are dreams, and I’ve got plenty of those, too), this year I hope to:

market HER SOUL FOR A CROWN alongside my team
have a release party for HSFAC at my local indie Best of Books
edit DESTINY with my editor and be close to final pass pages by the end of the year
pitch my agent the two new ideas jumping around in my head and determine which I should move forward with first
brainstorm, outline, and draft at least 3 chapters of that chosen book
submit said next thing to my editor and publisher

Now, one last reflection and intention. If you’ve been with me since last year, you’ll know that I set a personal goal of being able to do one chin up. Well, I can! But truly only one and it’s still a struggle. I injured myself late 2023 and it took most of 2024 to recover and rebuild my shoulder strength. And that’s okay. Though my goals are attainable, it doesn’t mean that I failed if they weren’t reached in 365 days. I’m closer than ever to that chin up. And so, I’m moving into 2025 with that same personal goal. I try to keep this perspective in my writing goals, too. Some of those beginning things with definitely happen. But the last two? Maybe. It depends on how releasing and editing goes. And that’s okay. I’ll be closer to the next, next thing than I am now. Progress over perfection. That’s how I’ll enjoy working this year.

Book Recommendation

This month I’ve really enjoyed:

The House of Eve by Sadeqa Johnson. It’s a historical fiction set in 1950s Philadelphia and Washington, DC, that explores what it means to be a woman and a mother, and how much one is willing to sacrifice to achieve her greatest goal. This was picked for my book club and I’ve listened to the audiobook and could not stop—I was even listening while working out.

Also!

Also, also! Check out the DEBUT science fiction and fantasy books releasing in 2025 with me. My shelves are about to become very heavy.

alyshasbooks

A post shared by @alyshasbooks

Alysha's Books

Discussion about this post