I generally have a lot of things on the go and what Jane Yolen described as a ‘Magpie energy’ that keeps me flitting from one shiny thing to another so one thing I like to do at the beginning of each year is to set some goals for myself. They provide a sort of framework where I can see all the projects I’ve taken on for the year, which provides some focus to help me zero in and get things done, while at the same time hopefully inspiring continued growth. I share them here on my blog so that I have a sense of accountability.

I’ve been doing this for a few years now, and I really find that it helps 🙂

Last year was severely over-scheduled. This year is going to be all about rediscovering work/life balance and not spreading myself so thin. Given that I call my to-do list The Hydra (on account of the fact it is freaking huge and every time I cross something off it two more things seem to sprout up in its place) I’ve decided to dub this year ‘The Year of Hydra Slaying!’ because it sounds a wee bit more dramatic than ‘The Year of Finding Balance and Getting Shit Done’ :-p

My Goals for 2018

• Write a book
  • I know this is super vague and that’s intentional. I have several ideas tumbling about in my mind and I haven’t settled on one yet.
• Make at least one blog post a week
• Read at least forty books, including the rest of the ones on my partial reading list from last year.
• Increase the number of my books available in libraries
  • I wish I had a more concrete goal to go here, but I still need to figure out what my system is going to be (Am I going to focus on a specific book? If so, which one? Am I going to focus on a specific library location? Where? How much time am I going to dedicate to this?). As I figure out the details I will share them on this blog.
• Attend the Creative Ink Festival
• Attend When Words Collide
• Successfully participate in NovPAD
  • NovPAD is November Poem-A-Day. I haven’t successfully pulled this off in ages, and I miss it.
• Successfully release the following titles:
  • E is for Evil
  • Fire: Demons, Dragons and Djinns
  • Tesseracts Twenty-one: Nevertheless
  • Prairie Starport
  • The Other Side of the Door*
  • Magical Menageries Colouring Book*
  • Starry Night (exclusive for mailing list subscribers)
• Have a successful submissions window for Grimm, Grit and Gasoline
  • Have a Table of Contents decided by the end of the year.
• Continue in my role as Assistant Editor for World Weaver Press
  • At present this looks like it will include acquiring and/or editing at least three titles.
• Edit the next book in E.C. Bell’s Marie Jenner books
• Work on putting together TOC for [Top Sekkrit] anthology
• Organise a Giftmas Blog Tour
• Increase my mailing list subscribers by 20%
• Increase my BookBub followers by 20%

(‘Success’ in regard to launches and submissions windows may sound subjective but I generally set concrete goals for myself when I create my launch plans or begin an open submissions period.)

I have a few other ‘Balance’ related goals as well, which include things like regular face-to-face meetings with friends and spending less time staring at screens, but because they don’t really connect directly to work I’m not going to post them here. But I do want to note I’m setting goals which are quality of life oriented in addition to my work-related ones 🙂 And because fitness counts as work-related because it relates to every-freaking-thing:

• Create and maintain some sort of routine that encourages more consistent body movement (this may include going to the gym, exercising at home or some other sort of getting off my ass and moving)
  • Successfully run at least three 5k races
  • Continue to use swimming as meditation and do more of it

That’s a lot for someone who is trying to do less this year but a fair amount of the work for the book releases was done in 2017 so I’m optimistic that not only can I pull most of this off (honestly the fitness stuff always has huge question marks around it) but that I can stay sane while doing it. I guess we’ll have to wait and see 😉

*Free advance copies to people who donated $40 or more to the 2017 Giftmas Blog Tour

What. A. Year.

I recently described 2017 as me living my best life in the darkest timeline (I feel like I read that somewhere and stole it, but I can’t remember where and it’s really, really accurate). In many ways it’s been a terrible bear of a year, but in lots of ways it’s been pretty awesome, too. One way I like to track that sort of thing is by setting goals at the start of a year and looking back to see how I’ve done at the end of it. So let’s see how 2017 went compared to what I’d hoped from it:

My Goals for 2017

Bolded goals were accomplished.

• Write the first draft of Deadmonton — my Winterknight Towers book
  • I didn’t accomplish this because, to make a long story short, Winterknight Towers and I have parted ways.
• Participate in the release and promotion of Dream Eater to the best of my ability
  • Done, and done!
• Publish D is for Dinosaur in February
  • Promote it to the best of my ability and hit my launch and sales goals
    • Sales aren’t where I wanted them to be, but they aren’t terrible and reviews are good so I’ll count this one as a win!
• Have Equus ready for a summer publication
  • Promote it to the best of my ability and hit my launch and sales goals
    • Yuppers! Done! We even had a Battle Royale to launch and promote this. It was fun, but plenty of work LOL
• Announce [Top Sekkrit Anthology #1] and hit all the publisher’s deadlines for it. (Announce in February?)
  • I’m pretty sure this Top Sekkrit Anthology was Tesseracts Twenty-one: Nevertheless which I co-edited with Greg Bechtel and handed in to the publisher this summer. I think they are announcing the Table of Contents next month!
• Announce [Top Sekkrit Anthology #2] and have it ready for a November publication date
  • This has to be referring to Mrs. Claus: Not the Fairy Tale They Say which came out in November. It’s been incredibly well-received, the reviews are good, sales are good and, in fact, it set a new personal best for pre-order sales. So I’m stoked!
• Have a successful open submissions period for Fire: Demons, Dragons and Djinns and hit all my deadlines for it
  • I definitely had a successful open submissions period and I’ve put together a fantastic Table of Contents. I’m not sure when we’ll be announcing that, soon, I expect. In the meantime I’m working hard on editing the stories so I can hand the manuscript in to the publisher on time.
• Announce E is for REDACTED and hit all my deadlines for it for a 2018 release
  • E is for Evil has been announced and so far we’re hitting all the internal deadlines for it. Okay… there is one story I still have to edit, but I’m still going to call this one accomplished.
• Take a vacation in July. For real.
  • I mean… more or less. I had a book come out in July but I scheduled everything I could ahead of time and spent as little time working as possible.
• Promote Haunted Hospitals to the best of my ability upon its release.
  • Yup! This even included being interviewed by a local newspaper and appearing on the radio. All very nerve-wracking despite the fact I’m actually pretty good at talking about stuff 😉
• Read 30 books that are not related to work, including those on my partial reading list.
  • According to Goodreads I read 57 books this year. Unfortunately only six of them were off my partial reading list. On the plus side, that leaves me with a great list to start reading from for 2018 LOL
• Spend at least half a day a week away from the internet, writing.
  • LOL I mean, at least I’m eternally optimistic, right? LOL
• Create and release the Magical Menageries colouring book
  • I have all the art for this, I just need to figure out how to put it together (it’s a bit different for art than for text) and make it happen. And I will. It just didn’t happen in 2017.

Phew!

In addition to hitting those goals I sold a novel to Tyche Books (Hollow, coming out in 2020!), an anthology series to World Weaver Press (starting with Grimm, Grit and Gasoline, submissions open in 2018!), acquired and edited Continuum by Wendy Nikel (coming January 23, 2017) for World Weaver Press and acquired its sequel The Grandmother Paradox, edited Dying on Second by E. C. Bell, helped raise almost $1,100 for the Edmonton Food Bank through this year’s Giftmas Blog Tour, won the In Places Between short story contest, spoke with the River Bottom Writers in Lethbridge, had a successful Equus launch at WWC, helped organize and participated in the local authors shindig at Variant Edition and remained, more or less sane (though I feel like I’m forgetting things on this list).

So, professionally speaking I’m going to call this year a win.

I’m looking forward to doing a wee bit less in 2018 LOL