Every year I set goals for myself, and then at the end of that year I look back at them to see how I’ve done. It helps with my productivity and gives me at least the illusion of some sort of focus 🙂 Now is the time for me to look at my 2015 goals and see how I did to help me determine what my 2016 goals will be.

My 2015 Goals:

Goals in italics are ones I’m saying I accomplished 🙂

Health

• Weigh less at the end of the year than I do at the start
• Run 5k
• No working on weekends and minimal working on evenings.

Huh. Yeah. So… totally failed at those first two, but I think with some small exceptions I did pretty well at not working on weekends and evenings. It’s a thing I need to continue to focus on because I really want to have a bit of balance in my life, but I definitely did better in 2015 than 2014 so I’ll take it 🙂

Editing / Publishing

• Publish the final three issues of Niteblade and then close down that aspect of the magazine
• Complete Corvidae and market it to the best of my ability
• Complete Scarecrow and market it to the best of my ability
• Publish B is for Broken and market it to the best of my ability
  • Beat the sales numbers for A is for Apocalypse (first three months)

I published B is for Broken (and it’s awesome) but I may have dropped the ball a bit in the marketing department. It has significantly fewer reviews than A is for Apocalypse and its sales numbers are also much lower. Part of the issue, I think, is that ‘Broken’ is a much more nebulous concept than ‘Apocalypse’ but some of it was definitely me. It’s been a learning experience though, especially in regard to choosing anthology subjects that are easier to market.

• When Shadows is published market it to the best of my ability

N/A

• Have the manuscript for C is for… polished and ready for publication

C is for Chimera is pretty spectacular. I’m going to reveal the cover and officially announce the release date here on my blog this Thursday. Meanwhile, I’ve already managed to garner a 1 star review for it on Goodreads despite the fact no one has read it but me. So that’s awesome. *sigh*

• Have the manuscript for D is for… polished and ready for publication

I have the authors lined up for D is for [TOP SEKKRIT] but haven’t progressed further on this title yet.

• Come up with a way to set actual concrete goals for promotion.

Yeah… I really should do this 😉

• Make progress on sekkrit collab with CJD

Making slow progress… but progress 🙂

• Open to submissions for Sirens

I’m currently trying to turn my shortlist into a table of contents. There were about 200 submissions sent my way and even many of the ones I didn’t shortlist were really, really good. There are some very difficult choices in my near future.

Writing

• Write and submit at least one new short story a month*
  • The ‘submit’ part of this is important. I can’t just write a first draft and leave it to moulder indefinitely. The story needs to be ready for submission and, in fact, submitted, within the month to count.

LOL Well, it looked good on paper.

• Begin querying agents about Hollow
• Self-publish at least one collection of reprints
• Complete work on collaborative project with Marge
• Successfully participate in April Poem-A-Day
  • This means actually writing a poem a day or at least having thirty poems written by the end of the month
• Participate in NaNoWriMo*
• Either complete the first draft of a new novel, or revise one of the novel first drafts I’ve already written (this can be completed in conjunction with NaNoWriMo or separate from it)

Reading

• Read at least 50 books
  • Slush doesn’t count, nor do books by friends I read to critique.
  • Have at least 20% be non-fiction

I read 46 books according to Goodreads, plus 13 which aren’t on Goodreads. And those 13 don’t count slush or books by friends I read to critique. So I really was successful even if Goodreads doesn’t know it 😉

Misc

• Create a website at poiseandpen.com
• Attend When Words Collide and Pure Spec
• Blog at least once a week
• When someone visits this blog and leaves a comment — reciprocate.

I’m still not awesome at this. I go to the blogs of people who visit and I read but very often I can’t think of anything intelligent to leave as a comment and ‘I was here, but now I’m gone…’ just doesn’t work for me, ya know?

Kobo

As of New Year’s Eve of 2014 I’d sold a total of one book via Kobo**. One. For a whopping $0.45 in royalties. One of my goals in 2015 is to improve that. I don’t have a super firm goal in mind but it shouldn’t be too difficult to top one sale and less than fifty cents in royalties, right?

Success! Partly on account of a BookBub deal, but I’d beaten my one sale for $0.45 in royalties even before that. There is still plenty of room for improvement here, but there’s always going to be, isn’t there?

*under this name or as a pen name project. Either counts.
**this doesn’t count books I didn’t self-publish like Fae, Metastasis etc.

 

Overall I feel like I had a successful year. I did plenty of things that aren’t reflected on this list of goals and even managed to accomplish more than I failed at. On paper it wasn’t a spectacular year but my reality was pretty amazeballs 🙂