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Editing, Goals

Goals for 2016

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Looking Ahead -- My goals for 2016Each year I set goals for the year to come and share them on my blog here. At the end of each year I assess how well I did in accomplishing my goals and set new ones. It’s an important thing for me, this setting and sharing of goals. Setting them and having them written down in concrete language really helps me regain my focus when I lose it (which is often), evaluate progress, get things done and also, look back over time and see a bigger picture of things I’ve accomplished. Sharing them on my blog here with you is equally important because it provides a sense of accountability which can be a huge motivation at times when I need it most.

Over the past couple years my goal lists have grown and grown becoming quite long and complicated. So, too, has my career when you count in the things I don’t talk about here (such as freelance work and ghostwriting). It was kind of beginning to feel overwhelming, which is pretty much the exact opposite of what I’m going for so I think it’s time to simplify a wee bit. Thus…

My Goals for 2016

  • Speed up my blog/website
  • Write the Haunted Hospitals book with Mark Leslie.
    • I’ve begun working on this in February. My goal is to have the first draft of my contribution done by the end of April. I’ve never written anything like this before though, so I’m unsure how reasonable this goal is.
  • Announce D is for… anthology and prepare it for an early 2017 release
  • Release C is for Chimera on April 19th
    • Promote it sufficiently to break the sales numbers for A is for Apocalypse (based on the first three months after release)
  • Release Sirens (July?)
    • Promote it sufficiently to break the earn out its advance within the first year. Bonus points if it’s in the first six months.
  • Attend the ‘Despite Excuses’ writing retreat in California this July
  • Take August off. With the exception of attending When Words Collide… which is work but also isn’t :-p
  • Write the first draft of Deadmonton (My Winterknight Towers book), beginning in November and using NaNoWriMo as a springboard to get started
  • Hire an editor for Shadows and prep it for release
  • Host a December blog tour to celebrate the holidays and benefit the food bank.

I’ve also got several projects that are pending or in limbo right now including a brand new anthology series (Keep your fingers crossed for this one, especially!), three stand-alone anthologies I’d be co-editing (with three different people) and two collaborative poetry projects. I’ve deliberately built some empty spaces into my project calendar for the year to address these projects. Also, you just never know when I’m going to be distracted by something shiny and need to take a little detour for a while 😉

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Winterknight Towers

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wkt-sketch-257x300Ed Greenwood has a new project. Or projects, rather. He has created 15 new worlds/settings and is setting a whole horde of creative people loose in them. It’s very exciting. There are novels, and short stories, RPGs and art, and I don’t even know what else. When I first learned about it during a news leak on Facebook (oops!) I requested the NDA that would give me access to the setting information even though I wasn’t sure this was a thing for me–I’ve never written in a shared world before and I’m also ridiculously busy. But I was curious and I wanted to poke around, see what was there.

And then, not only did my NDA get approved, Ed-freaking-Greenwood personally sent me an email inviting me to pitch a novel and suggesting the specific world he envisioned me writing in.

Holy crap.

HOLY CRAP!

I mean. How do you say no to that? If you’re me, you don’t. If you’re me you press pause on everything that you can and dive into the lore of the world Ed-freaking-Greenwood has invited you to pitch him a novel for. And then you come up with a story. And you pitch it. And then you wait. And wonder. And stress.

Which is totally what I did.

But now I am proud beyond words to announce that my pitch was accepted, the contracts have been signed and I will be writing a novel for the Winterknight Towers setting!

And I’m so stoked.

But also terrified.

Which I’m taking as a sign that I’m doing something right 😉

P.S. The novel has the working title of Deadmonton, which some of you may recall was also the title of a zombie novel I wrote a few years back–these are not the same thing. I struggle with titles but I needed something to include in my pitch, my story is set in Edmonton and it has to do with ghosts so, Deadmonton fit. I’m not sure if that will still be the title by the time we get to publication but it’s the title for now.