How I Moxied the Heck out of 2024!

Picking moxie as my 2024 word of the year was done with a little cheek--but I did my very best to rock that word all year long and even managed to turn it into a VERB! ha ha

I entered 2024 a bit fed up—with myself, with my publishing progress, and my management of all the things that need managing on a daily/weekly basis—and there’s a lot on that list. (Right?? Don’t we all have so many things to juggle?)

There are three signs in my office that were created out of conversations along those lines with other authors, which give you an idea of my mindset. They say:

I’m Not Getting Any Younger Here

I’d Be Better Off Writing

Manage Your Own S#!&!

I didn’t want to be looking back on 2024 with disappointment, and I created an action plan loosely based on choosing (albeit reluctantly) a word of the year—Moxie.

But what would success mean to me? How would I ‘moxie.’

It meant creating more, traveling more, publishing more—not accepting no—finding a way around—and doing it with as much flair and/or grace as I could manage.

Now, I’m not sure how graceful or full of flair I was—but I had a heck of good time in 2024! Was everything all unicorns and rainbows and sparkle and glitter. NOPE!

There were definitely some difficult and crazy-busy weeks filled with spreadsheets and lists and set backs.

But I tried to have a sense of humor about the hard parts of the year. And really humor is essential when things don’t go exactly the way we want. (That’s a reminder more to myself—but if you need it too—it’s yours to keep as well!)

Some facts and figures and numbers and notions to back up my claim!

Travel More

2024 was a good year for travel! The best since 2019! So we’re making a comeback people!!

12 Bookish days of travel (Bouchercon / Book Bonanza / WWA Conference): I had a great time at each of these! I didn’t even mind (much) catching a mild case of Covid at Bouchercon because the conference was just that fun!! (And what conference doesn’t come with a con-crud gift these days?)

32 days of non-book travel – 16 of which were on the trip to four African countries for the World Orphan Fund (plus a little safari tacked on the end). Here are posts on Santa Fe, New Mexico and Africa’s interesting journey, plus a separate article I wrote for the Blackbird Writers on meeting a Rwandan genocide survivor.

Publish More

Reminding myself that I am in control of my own S#!&, I moved forward with indie publishing both my middle grade novel, Haven, and my mystery suspense novel Beyond the Cemetery Gate. I won’t go into the complexities of the indie publishing process but there were some intense days with very long to-do lists. AND I decided – just for kicks – to release both books on the same day—Halloween. Because who doesn’t want a fun book launch Halloween party?!

Both books have been getting great reviews and a few early award nods. And they were both #1 New Releases in their categories on Amazon.

Additionally, the Blackbird Writers anthology, Taking Flight was published, with my contribution being a prequel to my Circle of Nine series. And the other Blackbird Anthology—Provoked—was made available for those who sign-up (free) for the Blackbird email list. My piece in that anthology is “122 Tranquility Court,” a vigilante piece that may end up being a jumping off point for a longer work in the future. I had great fun writing it. (Thanks to all the Blackbirds who put the hard work into editing and formatting these anthologies!)

I still have two other middle-grade novels completed in a what will be a four-book adventure series. Those are waiting for their edits to land on my to-do list, which might be in late 2025.

Create More

Starting a Podcast:

Along with author T.K. Sheffield, we created the WisMissus Podcast: Reading, Writing, & Roaming Around Wisconsin, the Midwest, & Beyond. We recorded 10 episodes in 2024, covering all sorts of publishing and writerly topics. Learn more here.

The podcasts with the most watches and reactions were:

Traditional vs Independent Publishing

How the Assertion that Nobody Buys Books Anymore IS NOT True!

Sharing my Failed Agent Search Adventures via YouTube Shorts

I concluded my YouTube short series about my agent query adventures / misadventures that started in the fall of 2023. (This was definitely one of my low points—not finding an agent for my YA mystery—however I tried to have a sense of humor about it!) If you didn’t watch those previously and are interested click here. NOTE: YouTube shorts are 1-minute (or less) videos.

Writing a ton of (okay — like 50) blog posts in 2024, which included:

• 12 Writers’ Forum Posts

• 8 posts for the Book Launch Basics Series

• 13 author interviews or Strange but True: Tales from Authors (these I just formatted as the other authors wrote these as guest posts)

• 3 Travel Stories

• 10+ posts from me on different topics, including updates on my publishing journey.

• The post with the most reactions was a recent one:

  “In Defense of Colleen Hoover” — although now I probably need to write another entitled “In Defense of Blake Lively.”

Books & Beer Book Club

I continued to organize the (almost) monthly gatherings of this book club, which is in-person at Cercis Brewing in Columbus each month as well as online via Zoom. Learn more on our Facebook page. I played host to 11 visiting authors as we discussed their books in our fun / casual Q&A meet up. These are available to watch via YouTube! We’re coming up on our 10-year anniversary in April!

Teaching, Consulting, and Book Marketing

I continued to work with middle-school writers at the Columbus Library throughout the year. This is such a great age group—they’re so creative and fun!!

I also taught adult authors the ins and outs of different types of marketing and promotions (and more) at conferences and in online webinars for Sisters in Crime and at Bouchercon and the Wisconsin Writers’ Association Conference.

And I had the honor of working with more than 30 amazing author clients throughout the year, helping to publish and market and promote their wonderful books!

Boring Behind the Scenes Stuff

2024 was the year for some major ‘housekeeping.’ I moved my blog over to Substack in the first quarter of 2024 (this was overcomplicated due to my previous website being built with drupal instead of wordpress—which necessitated a manual transfer of blog posts. Super long process!)

Launching a completely new / redesigned website. Check it out at ValerieBiel.com. (I had a lot of help with this—but ugh—rewriting/updating all that content was such a pain.)

What’s on deck for 2025?

Will it be Moxie Part 2? ~ I sure hope so!!

I’ll be focusing mainly on writing and publishing book 4 in my Circle of Nine series. I’m having great fun being back in that world as it’s been a minute since I’ve hung out with those characters.

I’m streamlining the services I offer to my clients. I’m also starting a subscription area on my Substack for more in-depth book promotion and marketing content. Podcasts and blog posts and more will continue to be offered for free to subscribers.

Much ongoing marketing will be happening for my newest releases and the older titles in the Circle of Nine series.

I’ll be at Left Coast Crime in March and Bouchercon in September. Anyone else reading this also going??

As for personal travel, cheap tickets to Madrid have enticed us back to Spain in the coming weeks, but other personal travel hasn’t been confirmed. For the World Orphan Fund, I know we’ll be in Guatemala in the fall of 2025 to celebrate the grand opening of the expanded Walker Center for Childhood Development. In the summer, we’ll likely be sticking close to home as grandbaby #2 arrives in June.

What are you looking forward to in 2025?

Do you have a new book coming out? Or some other great news?

Share your good news in the comments!!