Out with the Old...

2016 is over.  It's hard to believe - so much has happened this year.  We had our kitchen renovation, our baby is now a toddler, and I wrote another book.  Oh, and there was a presidential election which divided the country in two, but I digress, LOL.  Nah, I won't talk about politics.  I feel enough people are already, and I have nothing new to add.

Where does that leave me when wrapping up the old year?  Time for the new, of course.

I seldom make New Year's resolutions, as I think setting up the expectation of something that MUST be done is a good way of failing.  So I'll treat these as a Kickstarter campaign.  I will have my goals and my stretch goals.  I will fund it with my creativity and see if I can get this campaign off the ground.

GOALS:

1) Sell my romance book.  I've already started my search for an agent, so I figure I'm off to a good start.

2) Finish writing and editing my second romance book.  The first part is done already, so I just have to keep plugging away at it.

3) Start submitting short stories/poems again - I took a bit of a hiatus during the second half of 2016, so I'm going to dust off my story and poetry collection and put them out there again.

4) Write more book reviews.  I've been a bit sporadic during 2016 - I've written several reviews for the magazine Bewildering Stories, but then neglected the book reviews on my own website.  I'd like to juggle both.

STRETCH GOALS:

If I accomplish all of the above, I will reward myself by... accomplishing more!   Hah.

1) Publish/self-publish my fantasy book.  I'm undergoing an extensive edit of it and might send it out to some small press publishers.  Or I might self-publish.  I'll have to do more research on both options.

2) Publish/self-publish my science fiction book.  I haven't even started to edit this monster, so I'll need to really buckle down to get it going.

3) Start a food blog with my husband.  We've talked about it - he's a chef and I'm a writer, but we tend to have our own personal taste when it comes to food.  So it would be fun to do a "he said, she said" opinion piece of local restaurants and highlight our takes on different foods with side-by-side comparison recipes.

4) Write and illustrate a children's book.  Not sure I'll even get to this, but it would be fun to do.  I have an idea for a series, now I just need to find the time!

And I think that's quite enough to hope to accomplish this year.

​Although I'm a week late saying this, may everyone have a peaceful and prosperous New Year!