1. Replace all Ss with Zs, and abstain from all apostrophe usage.
Just kidding.

 
I was checking over last year’s post and realized I wrote it on Jan 4th, so actually I’m right on schedule here.

2017

Started the year living in West Virginia (we moved from Wyoming in December 2016). It is good to be back. I’m not used to running into people I knew in high school but now that happens every once in a while. I self published Little One in July. I’m glad to say that  readers wrote and said they loved it. Three of my short stories were published: “The Bald Man”, “Animals”, and most recently, “Fischer’s Mouth”. Click on the titles to see where you can find them (you can read “Animals” for free online). I went to more book festivals this year and met some great people, and I also got to do a couple signings at Empire Books and News in Huntington, WV.
Goals I set in 2017:

• Publish a novel in July – Check. See above paragraph, and buy copies of Little One for yourself and your friends! It takes place in the winter, so now’s a good time.
• Write one and a half novels – Not quite. I wrote one and finished it earlier than normal, but I didn’t end up getting any words down on the other. I did finally get an idea going, did some character sketches, did some research on it. So I don’t have nothing to show for that, but it doesn’t nearly qualify as half of a book. More like half of a start.
• HWA Active Membership – Nope, not yet.
• Do better at networking – I believe I’ve made some good connections and was able to converse with new friends and acquaintances in the writing community, so I count this as successful.
• Finish Bradbury Stories and The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway (the plan was to read two stories from each book per week) – I didn’t stay up to date with Bradbury, unfortunately. Emily and I went on a three week backpacking trip in September, which kind of threw me off of my schedule, and I was already a bit behind before then. Once we got back, I don’t think I even tried to recover. I did, however, finish Hemingway, as his stories tend to be shorter and there are fewer of them.
• Be a better blogger – Well I guess you could debate what is meant by a “better blogger”, but if you determine that solely on quantity of content, I did a little worse (or less, I guess is more accurate). I think I posted about 34 or 35 times in 2017, compared to 39 or 40 times in 2016. But hey, those are still good numbers for me. This blogging thing, not always my favorite pastime.

2018

I very much hope to find an agent for the novel I wrote last year. I know that a positive result for this goal is not entirely up to me. However, what I can do is keep querying. I have already had a few full MS requests, though I haven’t yet gotten an offer of representation. But I only started querying in October, and from what I hear it is a good sign to have full MS requests already, even if most of them have turned out later to be passes. The downside to this is that you guys won’t get to read it this year, whether I get an agent or not. But if I do get an agent, it could open up much bigger doors for me.
I need to get cracking on this next novel. West Virginia mountains! Bigfoot! A sheep farm! and that’s about all I got so far. Starting is always the hardest part. So I’ll say in terms of goals, start and finish this book. Then start another. (Similar to last year’s goal, which I kind of but didn’t really do).
I really want to focus on writing more short fiction this year. I’m going to set a goal of five new short stories in 2018. I think this is pretty doable: one less than bimonthly.
Kind of a plan more than a goal, since I registered last year—I’ll be attending StokerCon 2018! I’m really excited about that and can’t wait to meet new people. Finally it is within driving distance.
Happy new year, everybody!