Blogmas Day Fourteen: Looking Forward to 2022

After my ‘reflections’ post I thought it would a good idea to see what I’ve got coming up next year! And I really am looking forward to next year – I don’t know what it holds, but so far there is some exciting things happening that have me hopeful.

In the writing part of things, recently I was in Were-Tales, and going into 2022 I’ll be in two anthologies, plus the start of the year will see the release of A Woman Built By Man, an anthology I co-edited. The TOC for this is fantastic and I absolutely love the stories we’ve put together, and I’m so keen to see it go out into the world.

I want to try and dedicate more time to writing. I’m working on an edit for something I’m hoping I can start submitting in the early part of next year, so I may be looking for some luck as I hit the query trenches. The editing is going well, and has really picked up over the last month! I have a small amount of work for early January, and I’m happy where I am with that right now, too.

There’s also the matter of my brother’s wedding. I’m so excited for this – my sister-in-law is amazing, but along with the wedding comes the hen do and the whole being a bridesmaid thing. I think this is going to be a lot of fun.

We also already have two musicals planned! This is really exciting, as I have not been to see a musical live on stage in forever. The first one is Six in May, which I’ve heard so many great things about. I can’t listen to full soundtracks before seeing some version of the musical, but I have heard a couple of these songs and they’re fantastic.

I was also extremely lucky to win a giveaway from Wales Millennium Centre – for giving £5 on Giving Tuesday, you were entered into a draw to win 2 tickets for any 2022 show. Now, every Christmas period WMC has their big shows – this year is Beauty & The Beast. Next year is a musical both me and the BF have been desperate to see on stage…well, last few years for him, but me for what seems like forever. We’re going to go see Les Misérables, and I am so bloody excited, even if it’s not until December 2022!

As for my TBR – I’m gradually making a dent in my physical ARCs, as well as slowly getting through some of the books I’ve purchased through the years. I set myself a goal of 50 books for 2021, and I absolutely smashed that – I’m currently on 91. I doubt I’ll hit 100 before the end of the year, and I know I’m at 91 because of the period of redundancy. But whereas in 2020, I kept increasing my goal, I didn’t do that this year, and kept it at an amount I knew I’d hit, then when I got over that, I’ve just left it. I might increase it slightly next year, but if I manage to hit over 50 again I’ll be happy.

I have plenty of books to keep me going, too, with a really varied mix, so there’s something for every mood I’m in. And of course we are once again running our open calls over at Divination Hollow. We currently have these open for Black History Month and Women in Horror month, and we’ve had some submissions trickling in. We’ll be opening up for Pride in Horror early next year too, to get ready for June. Even if it’s not strictly horror, we love seeing a wide variety of content so definitely have a look if you like Horror, Dark Fantasy, Sci-Fi and anything else ‘horror-adjacent’.

I’m sure there will end up being more planned for 2022, and I really want to try and going with regular content on the blog, so hopefully I can do that. We’ll see. But as things stand right now, I’m looking forward to 2022 for the stuff happening in my personal life. But who knows how things will pan out with the current uncertainty. We’ll just have to wait and see.