Happy New Year 2024! I love January and the opportunity to start afresh. I know it’s arbitrary in some ways, but I measure my life by what I create, and I measure it in years. At the end of each year, I make a photobook, and I publish an article here, which helps keep me accountable. If you’d like to share your goals, please add them in the comments below.  2023 was a year of change, culminating in my 15-Year Pivot, and so 2024 will be a year of consolidation and optimization of my new creative and business processes — as well as writing and creating, plus surfing the wave of more change ahead. Joanna Penn writes non-fiction for authors and is an award-nominated, New York Times and USA Today bestselling thriller author as J.F. Penn. She’s also an award-winning podcaster, creative entrepreneur, and international professional speaker. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.  Show Notes * J.F. Penn — Spear of Destiny, and the Gothic Cathedral project * The Creative Penn Podcast and Patreon Community * Streamline The Creative Penn website, redo my Author Blueprint, and update my backlist books * Optimize my Shopify stores and Meta ads * Experiment more with AI tools that allow me to do more human creative things * Speaking and travel, health and fitness * Financials As ever, I am a full-time author-entrepreneur and this is my job, so I have a lot of goals. If your goals are simpler — like finishing your book, or publishing for the first time, or selling 1000 copies, then fantastic! You don’t have to have such extensive goals as me.  Please share your goals in the comments so we can keep each other accountable. J.F. Penn — Spear of Destiny, and the Gothic Cathedral project I’m planning on two major book projects, both launching with a special edition high-quality hardback and other exclusive products on Kickstarter, then selling the main editions on my JFPennBooks.com store before publishing wide to all the usual places.  Spear of Destiny, An ARKANE Thriller book 13 will be first, possibly launching in April/May. I’ve already started the research in terms of reading and thinking, and I have a trip booked to Vienna, Nuremberg, and Cologne at the end of January for more in-depth research and story hunting.  Spear of Destiny, cover mockup, jo penn on DALLE3 The Gothic Cathedral project is a chaotic mess of ideas right now, which I absolutely love. I have some vague thoughts on what it might turn into. I trust emergence! There will certainly be a gorgeous limited edition hardback of my photos of Gothic cathedrals which I’ve been taking for over a decade alongside essays on various aspects that go al...