It’s the start of 2024 so let’s talk about my plans for the year. I warn you now… this blog is going to be ramble and will probably make no sense to anyone – especially me.

How did 2023 go?

I’m going to start with a little reflection on 2023. I suppose it’s a little like a checklist of what happened during 2023 on a “professional” level – I ain’t going to bore people with my personal life… all I’ll say is my personal life was a tragic tale of broken hearts, bad shoes and ill-fitting trousers- which, for the people who don’t speak weird like me, translates to playing a lot of video games.

Let’s start with books – In 2023 I published 4 books, taking my total book count to 7. To even further break it down that’s 4 non-fiction books, 2 fiction books and an activity book. The books that came out in 2023 were…

It doesn’t feel like The Railway King came out in 2023 but it did and in April I challenged myself to write a book in 30 days and Monsters of the 12 Seas, a Phoenix Saga universe story, was what came out from it.

In terms of sales I sold 31 books on Amazon then a further 30 or so at model railway shows and to a local shop. This brings my total sales to around 61 making just short of £106.

Thank you to anyone reading who has bought a book from me this year and that 61 doesn’t sound like a lot (nor does the £106) but that’s 61 more books than I expected to sell. It’s a long way off the sales figures I need to start living my dream of a full-time author but it’s more than the £71.64 I made in 2022 so going in the right direction sales-wise.

I just did some maths and worked out I’d need to sell 339 Not-So-Romantic Railways books just to be able to pay rent. Does anyone fancy buying a book or three?

The only thing that didn’t come out that I wish had was “The Ghost Pirates” but we’ll talk about that later.

On a book front, I am pretty confident in saying it was a productive year, I have lots to work on but we’ll save that for a little further down.

Onto the blog!

31 blogs were published on the blog which you’re reading now. Of those 31 I wrote 29 and Sophie expertly wrote 2. I fell off the metaphorical lorry when it came to the blog in the last few months of 2023 for a whole host of reasons. But limited uploads are bad as to keep any blog relevant you need to upload regularly. I need some more guest writers or a better content plan. We’ll speak more about the blog in a bit.

Finally, in 2023, I started doing coding sessions for beginners and slightly more experienced beginners which I’ve been loving, did some school workshops on transport and storytelling, bought a LEGO train and managed not to give myself food poisoning once.

I’m not disappointed by the year by any stretch, there are always things you can do better with hindsight. I released books and blogs and did some coding and had some fun along the way.

2024 on the surface

So onto 2024. What does this year hold? Only time travellers know for sure.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking during the later end of 2023 – which is probably why the UK has smelt like burnt cheese for the last few months.

I’ve come to realise that I don’t really believe in the “grind” anymore. The grind is sometimes called the hustle. You set key goals and abandon everything such as free time, social life, friends and family to make them happen. Work hard and good things will happen and all that jazz.

I read a book called It Doesn’t Have to be Crazy at Work which has opened my eyes to a few things and shown me a slightly different way of working. I do recommend the book if you’re interested. I feel like it’s a book I’ll read a couple of times a year and always take something new from it.

The basis is that you don’t have to be a constant hustle to achieve things and we should focus on creating one excellent thing rather than hundreds of good things. This spoke to me a lot as throughout 2023 I was trying to do way too much at once- I have all these book ideas, I want to release them all straight away and other such unhealthy thoughts.

So one of my main things for 2024 is to sweat the small stuff and focus on quality over quantity. If I only make one excellent thing in 2024 I feel that is better than making 10 above-average things. I do have to be careful to not become a perfectionist who never does anything though.

I’m also not eliminating goal setting completely but I think the last few months have upgraded my ways of thinking and we’ll speak about a couple of changes I’m making to reflect that. There’s more to life than just the hustle and working 140 hours a week.

Another thing I’ve been really thinking about is the things that hold me back. I promise I won’t waffle for too long about this, but I’ll include it in case it’s useful to anyone else.

I started to ask myself the question “If money wasn’t necessary and I didn’t need a job what would I do with my time? – I’d recommend asking yourself this question, even if you don’t have a job yet.

If you were to ask everyone this question how many of those people would say they would do what they are already doing? I have no official stats but I would probably say it would be less than 5%. As much as I enjoy lots of elements of my job, it isn’t what I’d do if I didn’t need money.

In the art of being transparent, if money wasn’t needed I would do even more for my local Scout Group beyond already being a Squirell and Beaver Scout leader, I would still write and I would want to do something with youngsters – such as reading stories and things like that. There are other things, but they will remain in my head for the purpose of time-saving.

I am going somewhere with this I promise.

But this question got me thinking about why we stay in jobs or areas we don’t enjoy and there is a whole host of reasons. Mostly money-related. But when I really thought about myself on a personal level, money wasn’t a reason I stayed in a job before the job I’m in now for way too long, long after I’d achieved it all several times over and could do the job blindfolded with one leg whilst balancing a bowl on my head.

I made the connection that fear was a big reason why I stayed in this role for so long and when I ignored the fear and didn’t allow fear to be my determining factor on big decisions, I got a better job.

Fear made me concerned about what else was out there. What if the people weren’t as nice, what if I’m rubbish? What if this goes wrong… the fearful thoughts went on.

Then as I thought and looked back on my life I realised that fear has nearly always been my final determining factor when I’ve made big decisions. Why did I stay in a job for too long? Fear. Why didn’t I travel to that foreign country for three months to teach English and explore new locations? Fear. Why didn’t I go to university to further pursue my dreams of writing… fear. The more I reflected the more I realised fear has held me back because I let that fear be my determining factor. Hopefully, that makes sense.

It’s 2024 and time for me to stop letting fear be my determining factor. I don’t mean I’m going to start making stupid rushed decisions but fear can’t be what makes the final decision. Will it be easy? No, not at all – I’ve been controlled by this fear my whole life so I can’t just turn it off, but I’m going to work on it and hopefully, by the end of the year I’ll have made significant improvements.

So 2024 in a nutshell for me… live life more and fudge the fear. That word isn’t fudge but I don’t like swearing so use your imagination.

Books

So as I mentioned I did sell 61 books this year which is great but I do want to improve the sales figures. One thing I’ve known for a while is that I suck at marketing. I’ve been doing a lot of learning and I think I’ve got a better idea of how to market books for 2024 – only time will tell if it works. I’m proud of the books I’ve released and I want them to reach a bigger audience. I still have to learn a lot- but hopefully, my new knowledge will see an increase in sales.

More than sales I want to cultivate and build a real community and audience. I have some ideas on how to do that… people like £20 notes, right? But expect an e-mail list and other such things in the near future. I’ve also been thinking about a subscription service as well.

Actually, let me explain that a little more. Amazon are taking more and more money from me when it comes to book sales and I really don’t want to increase the price of books because they become unaffordable. Some sort of subscription service which would be a couple of quid a month or something – maybe tier price plans or something? – this would mean you pay a little bit each month and get access to early chapters, chapters which don’t make it to the final version of the book, signed copies of books and activities, discount codes and exclusive features- maybe even me narrating books.

No idea how to do that yet or if I’m even going to do it, but that’s my line of thinking. I would love to hear your thoughts about that as well.

In terms of releasing books…

I’ve decided not to do any pre-orders this year or ever until I get a much bigger audience. Nobody pre-orders the books – which isn’t a moan or anything, people just don’t pre-order from me because I don’t have the audience – and it sets deadlines that I don’t always want to meet.

Let me explain – or try to explain. I’m going to use The Railway King as an example. When I set the pre-order up for it I was writing a lot of it and it was going really well. About three months after setting up the pre-order – which would have been about two months before the book was due for release- I hit writer’s block with it. The best way to beat writer’s block is to put the project away and just leave it alone.

I couldn’t do this because of the pre-order deadline. And bear in mind that nobody had pre-ordered the book at this point- or at any point. I forced myself to write when I wasn’t feeling it which I believe harmed the book. I still think this is a great book… but is it the excellent book it could have been had I been able to leave it alone for a while?

Perhaps not. And you hear full-time authors having to do the same thing because of publisher deadlines. I don’t have a publisher because the 15 I sent my books to rejected it.

Hopefully, that makes sense for my way of thinking in terms of pre-orders. It takes away that pressure to rush a project or force myself to write something that I need to take a break from.

To play devil’s advocate to myself, taking away the need to meet deadlines is both dangerous and positive. I’ve mentioned the positives so let’s look at some of the more negative points.

The lack of need to meet deadlines means things can take ten times longer than they need to as work does expand to fill the time, but I think I’m going to try this slightly freer method for 2024 and readdress this time next year to see if it works for me.

Despite having no pre-orders I am working on some things and I thought it would be nice to quickly talk about the projects I would describe as “In production”.

The Ghost Pirates

I really want to release this book this year but I’m also aware that I’ve said that to myself (and others) since 2019 when I bought out The Vampire Fairy. It needs a lot of work still as the story is much bigger and I’m trying to set things up for the future titles and the story has gotten away from me somewhat. I think the best thing to say about the release of The Ghost Pirates is … “we’ll see.” I wouldn’t be surprised if another couple of universe stories came out before this second main series title.

The Not-So-Romantic Railways: The Activity Book… Yes… Another One!

I had a blast creating the first activity book and it is my best seller so I’d be foolish to not make another one right? It’ll be bigger, better and even less romantic than the first one.

Working title: Treasure Hunters From the Future

For a long time, I’ve wanted to create a “choose your own ending” book and this could be my first foray into the market. It’s in early development, with around 5000 words written, but it sees a treasure hunter from the future sending treasure back in time for people of the past to help get it open.

This could also make a great escape room concept so keep your eyes peeled.

Tik-Tok stories

I have a fair amount of short story ideas, like 2 or 3-minute stories. Shorts… they’re shorts.

I don’t really want to put them all in a book but I do want to share them. TikTok is perhaps the missing link. Using AI I can generate some images and tell these shorts in the form of a Tik-Tok – this way they’re free for everyone with the app to watch and I can put them on YouTube and Instagram as well.

This could be AI images or even LEGO stop motion which I’ve really gotten into recently. I won’t promise hundreds of stories or anything but I think it’ll be a fun way to share different stories with everyone.

I am working on a couple of other things but they’re in no state to talk about at this current time. And there are no promises to what will come out… the only I can pretty much guarantee is a new activity book.

Activity tubes

Slightly connected to books are my new activity tubes.

I was inspired by a Christmas Activity Tube I saw in a shop and thought “Why don’t I do something like that?”.

So I adopted my best George Stephenson impression and stole the idea and adapted it to my own plans and I’ll claim I thought of it all myself.

Currently, these are loosely known as the Not-So-Romantic Railways Activity Tubes to go alongside the books but I’m tempted to get rid of the railways out of it and make a wider variety – animals/space etc.

These would include some colouring sheets, a crossword, word search and other similar sorts of things, and a pack of pencils… STICKERS- there should be stickers! These could be used as a giveaway for buying a book or just to sell for a couple of quid for an afternoon of entertainment- who knows?

To half explain where these are at in development… I know what I want in them, I haven’t made any, I have no idea where to sell them, I don’t know when they’re coming out.

The Not-So-Romantic Blog

Whilst I effectively published 2 blogs a month across the course of the year, this is still below what I want to do for the blog. I want to upload once a week at least.

Like the books and everything else I’m doing, I need to work on getting the blog out there more and I have included it in my marketing plan which hopefully makes a difference. As always word of mouth is a big marketing plus so if you read a blog or a book of mine you really like please do share it with others.

My biggest thing is the audience. The blog is written for everyone but I think people will see it as “just for kids”, which is fine and on some levels it potentially is. But do kids read blogs? That’s a rhetorical question… but if any could answer it… rock on. So is a blog the best place to put out the content I’m creating? I honestly don’t know. Perhaps this could be something that goes into the subscription service and I release fewer blogs on this free one or a different style of blogs on here.

You can probably tell my brain is all over the place at the moment with different thoughts and ideas. I feel like I’m a computer having a new processor updated and not everything is fully installed yet.

I enjoy writing the blog, and it’s massively helped improve my writing, so for the time being, I will keep going for now but I think I’m at a bit of a crossroads with the blog and I just need to decide which road to go down.

Oh- just in case you were at all interested I’ve started using AI to generate thumbnails for the blogs to give it that little extra pop.

The Not-So-Romantic Podcast

Everyone seems to have a podcast nowadays and I want one as well.

My podcast won’t be weekly episodes (at least I don’t think it will) but rather a series of “specials” or “seasons” if you like.

For example, the first special which is waiting to be recorded is “The history of the toilet” where I’ve very enjoyably researched everything there is to research about toilets and have written a podcast about it.

The will be in 4 or 5 episodes to make up a “special/season” and then be uploaded separately as the complete podcast.

I also want to have guests as you can only listen to my voice for so long before it gets annoying.

That’s where my thinking is with the podcast and if I don’t try I’ll never know. Let me know any ideas I can steal from you to use as well!

£5 code club

Since 2020 I’ve had an absolute fascination with coding and it’s become more than a hobby for me. So, after a few trial runs in 2023 I’m officially launching £5 code club.

This is a more affordable online code club in which beginners or slightly experienced coders can learn new skills. Be sure to check out the clubs webpage and you can book your spot via my Eventbrite page.

This is only the beginning of £5 Code Club and I’ve got big plans for it, so be sure to join me at the start of the journey. Be sure to keep an eye out on my social media channels where I’ll be occasionally sharing discount codes.

This is again something that could be in that subscription service I was talking about earlier. There could be a book subscription, a code subscription and a mixture of the two… my head is an absolute mess I can only apologise.

For now, I think that’s all I’ve got- I’ve rambled enough as they say, perhaps I’ll do more ramble-fueled blogs moving forward- or maybe that’s what this blog will become… who knows!

I hope everyone has a wonderful 2024! Thanks for reading.