Snowy Sunday in PJs

As the end of the year inches closer, I’ve been thinking back on all my accomplishments this year. In just a couple of weeks, we’ll be doing the end-of-year review. In 2024 (so far lol), Haven Street Publishing has published three novels and two picture books. So, it has been a really slow year. A lot of the slowdown was caused by indecision and changes. And then there were the two months that I did absolutely nothing but make Youtube videos lol, plus the beginning of last year when I had diverticulitis and took a couple weeks off work. Not to mention the time I took off to actually write a novel.

Things will be different in 2025, but I’m not sure how. I know we’ll be branching out into audio books, but with the samples that have come in for first chapters, I’m not sure it will be that easy to get the right voice artists. Supposedly, audio books sell better if the actual author does the recording, so something tells me I’m going to be spending about three weeks recording my novel. Tbh, I’m not sure what we’ve done for research is correct. I don’t listen to audio books myself; I’m either a full visual video consumer or an actual words-on-a-page book reader. To me, audio books is like a middle ground of being read to, and I seem to find it hard to pay attention. Audio books fail to keep my attention. I’ve tried listening to them when I have insomnia, and I find I’m not paying attention because I’m thinking, “I hope this helps me fall asleep,” until I’m so tired that the sound of a narrator is grating on my nerves lol. Although, I have been able to listen to Wayne Dyer’s audio books from time to time (not completely all the way through, but just when I can’t sleep).

Another change coming in 2025 is I’m going to try to do picture book illustrations myself. Illustrations are expensive and it’s been hard to get exactly what I envision from someone else. At this point, I would say our picture books are pretty crappy. I shouldn’t say that. (Did I mention I used to be Marketing Manager of a publishing company a long time ago???) But seriously, in my opinion, they are not the best that could be done. So, I’m going to experiment with watercolor paint and see what those look like. I have kind of lost my art talent over the years from ignoring it for the past few decades. I don’t know if it’s possible to get it back. Especially since I don’t really want to invest that much time into redeveloping my skills. The passion isn’t there for it like it used to be.  I’ve been taking lessons on using Procreate and have created some pretty cool pictures. I painted the picture for the cover of The Wishing Field (everything but the girl who was photoshopped in). I’ll post a picture here. 

So, I believe if I put my mind to it and do the illustrations on canvas and scan them, I can probably do the illustrations myself for the 2025 picture books. We’re expanding and have 10 picture books planned to be released in either summer or fall 2025.

So far, for 2025, we have zero releases scheduled for the first quarter, and in spring we only have one fiction release. That is unless a lot of stuff gets completed in the first two weeks of January, and then the catalogue would have to be rapidly revised and printed and mailed. Thankfully, the Canada Post strike has delayed the spring catalogue being mailed out and we can’t even get them printed yet because the couriers are not accepting any new deliveries because they are also trying to handle the Canada Post critical packages, which is causing a backlog in their normal deliveries, plus all the extra deliveries as people are resorting to couriers. So, it’s kind of a stand-still kind of thing. However, if it persists, so be it; at least we’re in the distribution catalogue. I do believe everything happens for a reason, so whatever happens, happens. Onward and upward!