2019 will always be a special year for me, as it was the year that I finally got my first original novel into print. It’s been a long road: for most of my life I’ve only been able to complete works of fanfiction, with a growing but dispiriting portfolio of three-quarters finished original novels piling up in my ‘resting’ folder on my laptop.
And then Nanowrimo 2018 came around and I thought, okay. This is your chance to write something start to finish. No getting sidetracked by fandoms, Masters Assignments, short stories. None of that. Just don’t stop until it’s done.
And I did. I did the obligatory 50k+ I usually do for nano – and kept going. A few months later I had a complete (complete!!) draft in my ‘resting’ folder. I edited it over the spring and early summer with the help of first readers and spag monitors, and Happy Antlers put it out in the world on a hot summer day.
And people bought it, and read it, and a lot of them really liked it.
I can’t really explain how happy this makes me. But it’s a lot.
Since then things have been really busy. My plan to write Hunter and Morgan II for nano this year came up against a lot of real life stuff that made writing near impossible. But I have nearly finished the first novel in another series (Flynn Anderson and the Cave of Echoes) and I’ll be doing the final edit on Moonside soon. Then Hunter and Morgan II will be in the works.
My priority for 2020 is to make sure I don’t have another time like this autumn, when work has taken over the energy that should be going into writing. This is my passion, my life; it’s what keeps my mind and soul healthy.
But 2019 will always have that gloss of being the year that I published my first novel. If you’ve read and enjoyed Hunter and Morgan, thank you. It will always have a special place in my heart.
H.K. Nightingale 