Caffeineforge

After noticing how rarely I updated this blog last year I told myself I would update it at least monthly this year. There’s still time to make that a true statement! (barely.)

Let’s start with a bit of a retrospective post then. 2024 was a pretty great one for me. I published my first book, sold my first audio rights, and got over 10,000 followers on Royal Road. Most importantly, though, I wrote a lot, and I mean, a LOT.

In 2024 I wrote 1,200,000 words. Not all of those were for the stories I post so regularly, and not all of them will even see the light of day (because some ideas don’t turn out), but all of them to represent a chapter or a short story somewhere that could have been a thing. I’m sure more than a million of them will eventually make their way into the wider world.

I got my fifth short story accepted, my 95th short story rejected, and continued to make progress on that side project. I also finished two of my larger stories Tenebroum (520k words or so) and Broken System (270k words). If you’re interested in either project Broken System 3 released yesterday so the whole trilogy is available now. Tenebroum 3 also went up for preorder the other day, though it releases 2/24/25. (Book 2’s audiobook releases in March.)

This leaves me with only Death After Death and Brewing Bad as ongoing web novels (along with a pile of editing on other completed works!) I expect at least one of those will finish in 2025, but I will save 2025 goals for a February post (so I don’t slack off again!)

Really, though, writing them is just the tip of the iceberg. After that there’s second and third drafts, editors, publishing, etc. This graph shows that off a little better. You can see which stories are close to the finish line, and which have barely gotten started.

I’ve also started tuning this website up again. For now, I’m just working on better links to various things, but I may look up a slightly more modern template/theme at some point.

How about me personally? Well, I’m still in Germany. I finally got my long stay visa, and all the other stuff sorted out. So, things are slowly simplifying on that front as well. My wife and I are doing very well.