 What's shaking? My name's Cam. Welcome back to another video. Last year my goal was to simply finish a book. Now I don't want to brag but I did drag myself across that finish line. Albeit broken and bloody but I did it. In about a week that book actually comes out. But this video isn't about plugging that book. It was a big year for me as far as writing goes and if I can be so bold I really am proud of myself for hitching up my short and getting something finished. Especially a story that emotionally draining. 2020 is over and I know we're all super bummed about that. But it's a new year and I'm confident that this year I will not only finish another book but I'm confident that I will finish multiple. Famous last words I know. I'm going to tell you a bit about what I have planned, how I plan on going about it and also what my goals for this YouTube channel are in future. In fact let's get into that first. I've been on YouTube for over four years now. Four years. I have no idea how that much time has passed so quickly especially when every year has felt longer than a Meatloaf music video. Four years. 13,000 subscribers. 830,000 video views in total. About 250 videos and more Hawaiian shirts than a cruise ship filled with guys in their 60s. A lot of numbers is what I'm saying and to be honest I try my best not to think about those numbers. I'm not going to say that I don't care about my views and subscribers etc because I do. Of course I do. It might not seem like it but a lot a lot of time and effort goes into making these videos and I wouldn't do that so consistently if after four years I was only getting like you know like 10 views or something like that. Of course I care about the numbers but I try not to because it really sucks getting your head wrapped up in that BS. The truth is that I get a pretty small amount of views for the amount of subscribers I have and my subscriber growth is actually pretty slow compared to others. I know that might seem like an odd thing to say as someone who has over 10,000 subscribers but I was gaining a lot of subscribers like a couple years ago that's kind of when I blew up so to speak and since then it has trickled down quite a bit. At the very least my growth seems pretty slow compared to a lot of others. There's just no way to see that and not wonder if I'm doing something wrong. That's just a bit of an insecurity I have and I actively avoid talking about it because I know it seems ungrateful to bring attention to this stuff. To be clear I don't care about the numbers that much I'm just trying to be honest in saying that of course I do care about them at least a bit. At the end of the day there are hundreds of people who tune in just to see what I have to say and at some point or another at least 13,000 people have enjoyed my content enough to hit a button so that means something. It means something to me it means quite a lot actually and when I consider that fact all of the other numbers just seem arbitrary. So basically what I'm trying to say is that as far as channel goals go I don't have any number goals like a subscriber goal or anything like that. I don't want to think about hitting a number my goal is simply this I want to make more exciting content. I'll still make videos where I'm sitting here chatting to like a talking head but I also want to make more videos where I get out of this dungeon maybe even go outside who knows if I'm feeling adventurous just get out and do more fun stuff you know. I also really really want to do more collaborations it's harder than you'd think but I'll give it a try I've talked about it a bit before but it's just a bit of a tricky thing to navigate because when you ask youtubers with higher subscriber counts or whatever for a collaboration a lot of the time they will immediately assume that you're just trying to like leech views or something like that which is completely understandable because that does happen a lot and of course getting a whole new audience is a benefit of collaborating and a part of it but there also just happens to be other creators that I just I like their content I think their content mixes well with mine and I would like to do stuff with them you know not just bigger channels but also smaller channels because I don't have an issue with that I've done a ton of collaborating with channels that have smaller subscriber counts but I I'm getting sick of even mentioning subscriber counts because it's just silly it's just not that important when talking about collaborating I have a lot of what I think are really interesting and unique ideas for collabs that have to do with reading and writing I just have to reach out to some people and see what I can get sorted another goal for me as far as my channel goes is to do at least one live stream every week or two it could be just us chatting about books and writing it could be us doing writing sprints or it could be a collaboration like what I was just talking about I really love doing live streams I started doing a whole ton of them towards the end of last year and talking to you guys in real time rather than just in the comments of my videos has been a blast we already have a ton of inside jokes and you guys are already gotten very comfortable uh giving me crap on the live streams which you know it's fine those are pretty much all of my channel goals right now in a nutshell I just want to do some new stuff I want to mix it up I want to collaborate now as for my writing I have a lot of plans as you might know my book welcome descent comes out in like a week but did you know that there is a second horror tube anthology coming out uh remember this one called local haunts it's an anthology of horror short stories made up entirely of like youtubers and creators and bloggers well there's another one coming out very soon actually I think in the next month or two it's going to be called served cold the theme is obviously wintery and cold and I have a short story in it called red albums I'm really really proud of this story I think it's quite emotional and haunting I'll keep you guys updated on the release of that anthology I'm really excited the last one went really well our local haunts so I have high hopes for the next one as well oh and by the way all of the profits for these anthologies go directly to charity so that's pretty cool aside from that the next book that I'm working on myself is actually it's another anthology of horror short stories but all of the short stories in this one are mine mine there's going to be about 10 short stories and nine of them have already been finished the first drafts I'm hoping for a release in early May at the moment I'm pretty optimistic I can hit that I got to tell you I am so keen for you guys to read these stories I think they are just I think they're great I kind of went wild with these stories and just said like fuck it what if this happened they were a lot of fun the right the stories are all pretty wacky some of them have a bit of a weird weird spin but they're still pretty spooky there's not really a central theme for all of them but I guess you could say that a theme of the stories is that it's a character finding themselves in a very unfamiliar and bizarre place so that's my next scheduled release beyond that one I also plan on getting started on a very ambitious fantasy series this is going to be like my biggest project maybe ever it's a bit of a weird one I have spoken about it before but I'll give you a bit of a refresher I've done a bit of drafting but I still have a lot of planning left to go they will be somewhat shorter books anywhere from like 30 000 to 50 000 words so somewhere between like a novella and a novel and they will be episodic meaning that while there will be a greater plot line tying all of them together each book will be somewhat self-contained as well think of it kind of like how the show supernatural was structured there were big plot lines but also every episode was like self-contained and while there will be our major plot lines optimistically there isn't really an end date for this series in sight it's something I could just keep writing and writing and writing and writing until I feel like it needs to end the idea is that it's an entirely fictional world built from the ground up and it has a bit of a wild west spin the stories will follow two best friends as they travel from place to fantasy place as hired guns kind of like mercenaries for hire not just killing people or things by carrying out odd jobs for money they could be hunting monsters in one moment or they could be helping with a heist in the next I have a ton of ideas for these books and to be honest I'm just really excited to get back to writing fantasy writing horror is a blast don't get me wrong but there is a freedom in writing fantasy that I really miss the story can like go anywhere you like it's a real playground for imagination I'm just very keen to get back to that maybe I'm just being optimistic but I feel like this is going to be a really important or notable year for my writing things rarely go to plan but for the first time in a long time I have a real roadmap for where I want to go this year and what I want to achieve and the great thing is that making YouTube videos about it is going to keep me on track so yeah what are your goals for 2021 let me know I have plenty more videos to come and I think my videos are going to get a bit more interesting this year hopefully thanks for watching the video especially if you watched it this far I really really do appreciate you thank you I really do hope you have a nice day catch you