2021 Wrap up

Last year I wrote that my plans were “Clean up, cataloging, consolidation, and celebration.” I said, “This might look like combining my selinafenech.com and fairiesandfantasy.com websites together, or bringing my novels published under a pen name into my main range.”

And yep, I did those things! I got this new website up and running, combined my pen names, and I celebrated ten years in publishing!

It has been a long year. Everything that happened before July feels like it was ten years ago! But all things considered, I got quite a bit done. Here’s the round up.

Publishing

The Magically Ever After anthology was out in February, but didn’t hit the bestseller lists we aimed for, even with many thousands of sales. We just weren’t lucky. But my Rumpelstiltskin retelling novel I created for it (A Cage of Gold and Lies) will be out in January 2022, and I may even write some more fairy tale retellings. Would you like to see more for this series?

Beshadowed 2: Blood Bound, and Beshadowed 3: Shadows Awoken were both completed and released! It feels like a dream to be completing this series, that I have been planning for so long. 

The vampire romance that I had under a pen name got a rebranding and released as Heartsblood: Unlife, Remortality, and Deathless, plus the Omnibus. 

The other book by my pen name is spicier so I’ve decided not to republish it alongside my YA novels for now, but it is available for free to those who sign up to my newsletter in the Subscriber Library.

Quick View
Books
A Cage of Gold and Lies – A Rumpelstiltskin RetellingRead more Quick View
Books
Heartsblood OmnibusRead more Quick View
Books
Heartsblood 3 – DeathlessRead more Quick View
Books
Heartsblood 2 – RemortalityRead more Quick View
Books
Heartsblood 1 – UnlifeRead more Quick View
Beshadowed - Urban Fantasy
Beshadowed 2 – Blood BoundRead more Quick View
Beshadowed - Urban Fantasy
Beshadowed 3 – Shadows AwokenRead more

It was a bit of a slow down on colouring books this year, but I still got two brand new books out, plus a minis and a bundle. I’m really proud of Wild Magic and the new Mermaids and Animal Companions books, as both contain a lot of animal and creature companions in them that were a lot of fun!

I also started working with the amazing Delphine Lévesque Demers who will be creating some of my designs as grayscale versions, so fans of grayscale colouring, keep an eye out next year for more!

Quick View
Books
Magic and Dark Fantasy Coloring Collection: 100 DesignsRead more Quick View
Books
Mermaids and Animal Companions Coloring BookRead more Quick View
Books
Dark Enchantment Minis – Pocket Sized Coloring BookRead more Quick View
Books
Wild Magic – Witches and Wizards Coloring BookRead more Painting

This year was another quite productive one for painting, with many new artworks created, and I’m quite proud of how some of them turned out.

 

Charming

 

Autumn Magic

 

Crown of Stars and Thorns

 

Vulpes Aurum

 

Fox gate

 

Woodland Queen

 

Little Dragon’s Lair

 

Forgiveness

 

78 Tarot – The Sun

Also completed but not yet released: Solar Energy, Lunar Energy, Transformation, Make a Choice, Overwhelm, Friendship, Lilac Enchantment

General Business

For the last few years, most of my business plan has revolved around creating content (write all the novels, design all the colouring books!), and cleaning up old loose threads of smaller parts of my business to manage my time better. But that’s just about all done now! Obviously creating new books will continue to be one of my main pursuits, but I also need to spend some time going forward actually promoting them a bit too, lol. 

I also need to work out how to be a better employer/manager of others and bring more people into my business to help out, because I feel like that would really help out. 

Personal

This year we had over three months of lockdown and homeschooling, yikes. It was a tough time, but we got through it as a family and I’m proud of us for that! Proud of all of Australia for that! In other random news, I became the secretary of my local scouts group, made my first will, joined Tiktok, and got my COVID jabs.

What’s next?

Straight up for next year my main priority is wrapping up the Beshadowed series with the fourth and final book in that story.

Then I would like to do one more mermaid colouring book, because that will give me four needed to create a super bundle mermaid book, which would be so cool! 

Once those projects are done, I’m actually unsure what to start next. I have lots of options…

I’ve written a story for a picture book that I could illustrate.

I have an epic fantasy about a half dragon/half unicorn I’d like to write… or maybe turn into a graphic novel? That’s a huge job, but a bit of a bucket list item for me.

I have outlines for more fairy tale retellings I could write, and outlines for a series of epic fantasy shifter romances, and plans for a post-apocalyptic series, or … well, you get the idea. I have a lot of other story ideas and plans I could be writing! 

But I haven’t decided which to work on yet. 

What do you think I should do next year?

The post 2021 Wrap up appeared first on Selina Fenech Artist and Author.