Every New Year’s Dayish I review the previous year and make new goals. Last year I posted a stock photo of a silly sheep, as well. No ewe this year.
2022 review
2022 had a lot going on. Job changes, moving, first-time homeownership—all this, to say nothing of writing-related goals. But we’re here to say something of the writing-related goals. So let’s get to it. What were my 2022 goals?
Finish Gobbler of Fire —Yes, though not nearly as early as I planned.
Write another adult novel —Not even close.
Write another short story or two — Yes, and it is… interesting.
Fresh feasting for your famished earholes, hot off the audio griddle. Curtis M. Lawson, host of the podcast Wyrd Transmissions, has interviewed me. Listen to us chat a little about my writing and a lot more about other stuff.
Well, that’s it—for When the Watcher Shakes. But the sale has just begun on my ghost novel,Little One. Just 99 cents for the Kindle version, only this week. Don’t miss it.
Thus begins my End of Summer Sale on the Kindle versions of my novels! Head over to Amazon (US or UK) to buy my first novel, When the Watcher Shakes, for just 99 cents!
The walls were meant to keep evil out—but they only hid the evil within.
“A chilling entry in the small-town horror genre. Huguenin combines suspense, mystery, and action in page-turning style.” — Scott Nicholson, The Red Church
It’s already getting very cool in the Allegheny mountains. Autumn is coming.
As the summer wraps up, I’m going to be doing a 99 cent sale on the Kindle versions of my novels (sale price will apply to the US and UK amazon markets only). When the Watcher Shakes will go on sale first for a week, followed by Little One for another week. Stay tuned.
Email list subscribers will be notified first.
It’s time for a little update to my first book, When the Watcher Shakes. Behold this gorgeous cover from none other than Ben Baldwin, who also designed my covers for Little One and Antique Bed, and whose art has appeared in publications like Black Static, Stephen King & Richard Chizmar’s Gwendy’s Button Box, and too many others of note to name here.
Please note that this is not a sequel. This is a new edition with some superficial changes to the text. Nothing has changed in regard to plot or characters, and no scenes have been added or removed. So if you already own a copy of the first edition, congrats! You don’t need to get the new one, unless you are, like me, a sucker for awesome artwork and need to have a copy just for the new cover. But now may be a good time to think if you have any friends that need a copy. 🙂
Click here to buy When the Watcher Shakes on Amazon!
Ok, so I guess the last couple years I’ve done an annual review and renew of annual goals set/met/failed. We’re already more than halfway through January and I haven’t written anything on my blog. Let’s see…
2018
OK let’s look at those 2018 goals:
Get agent/publisher – Nope. Still working on it.
Finish Bigfoot novel – Again, no. I did write a bit more on it, but I made remarkably little progress.
Write more short stories (at least five) – Yes! Though I wrote very little on my novel, I actually completed six short stories throughout the year, totaling over 20,900 words. Still not as much as previous years (if you count novels), but not a total failure, and a big win for the short fiction goal specifically.
Attend StokerCon 2018 – Yeah, but I already knew I was going to do that.
The following comments do not necessarily describe events in chronological order:
My #1 desire of 2018 was to find an agent to represent my coming-of-age horror novel about a small town boy vs. a nefarious hypnotist, Schafer; alternatively, to find a small press accepting unagented submissions who would want to publish it. Unfortunately, so far I have not done either, though not for lack of trying. There are still good publishers out there that I am continuing to submit to. Maybe I’ll have better results this year.
I attended StokerCon 2018 in Providence, RI. It was both my first time at StokerCon and my first time in Providence. I blogged briefly about it and put up a few pictures when I got back. It was a huge encouragement to meet so many other creators and workers in the industry, and I hope to be able to attend again soon.
Some of you remember I announced that I was working towards my Master of Arts in Teaching. I am still gathering the required prerequisite undergrad credits that I didn’t get when I double majored in camping and theology. Last year I finished an Introduction to Linguistics online class through Rio Salado College. I also passed the American Literature CLEP Exam (thanks in part to Modern States).
The West Virginia Writers didn’t have a volunteer representative for the region I now live in (Region 2 = Pocahontas, Pendleton, Randolph, and Webster counties), so I signed up for that. I did try to get together a little kids’ writing workshop for our region, but, sadly, I wasn’t able to generate enough interest. Perhaps I misjudged my marketing skills.
I didn’t do too badly in terms of short fiction publications. “The Unknown Thing” was published by Australian-based Things In the Well Publications in one of their themed anthologies called Beneath the Waves: Tales From the Deep, which is available in both hardcover and paperback on Amazon. In June, I made a repeat appearance in Hinnom Magazine with “The Station Agent’s Wife, 1927”. I was later contacted by Max Ablitzer who was interested in producing one of my short stories for his new Horror Tales Podcast. I happily sent along “The Unknown Thing” when the rights became available. Max did his thing with it, and the sound effects and narration made for a pretty great episode (see Episode 4). In October, I published the short ebook Antique Bed: A Horror Novelette, which you can buy now for Kindle at only $0.99. Even though the BookBub ad and the discount is long over, I continue to see noticeably better sales numbers per week compared to before the ad.
If you think in terms of actual goals set and accomplished, it doesn’t look like a great year. However, some really cool things did happen to me last year, including a big boost in sales from a BookBub ad that helped qualify me for Active Member status in the HWA. In fact, gaining Active status was actually one of my 2017 goals, so I’ll count that win!
And this isn’t related at all to my writing career, but Emily and I visited El Salvador in September, which was amazing, so I just wanted to mention that and share a few pictures.
2019
I’m still going to be sending out Schafer to publishers as long as I can find good ones to send to. I haven’t totally lost hope on that front. This year could be the year. Despite my false starts with it, I really think it is a good book—it is one of my favorite things I’ve made—and I really want it to find a good home.
I really need to finish this Bigfoot book. Like, really. So there’s that. However, I also have more going on in my life, including online school, doing a bit of writing for the local paper, and a new job at a coffee shop. Oh yeah, that’s something that happened last year I forgot to mention—I am now a barista at the new TipTop in Elkins (pics below taken from their Facebook page)!
It is great to serve that community and have fun making amazing espresso drinks, but it leaves me less time to write. We’ll see if I can squeeze in enough words here and there to finish a novel in 2019.
I’m hoping to get something cool going in 2019 to help increase enthusiasm for literature around these here parts.
In terms of my education, I still need to get some Literature credits on the cheap, so I’m going to try to pass the English Lit CLEP Exam. I’m more nervous about this one than American Lit, partly because I didn’t know what I was getting into with the American exam, and partly because I feel less comfortable with and am less interested in English lit than American.
Still trying to figure out what events I’ll be attending this year. Three of my go-tos that I’m pretty confident I’ll be at again are the Lewisburg Literary Festival, West Virginia Book Festival, and WV Writers Summer Conference. I’m still on the fence about some others. I really would love to go to Necon, but I’m not so sure I can swing it this year (and I’m not even sure registration is still open). More doable is Scares That Care, but I haven’t figured out my budget for stuff like that yet. We’ll see!
Since I mentioned vacations before, I’ll just say that El Salvador was an amazing adventure, but this year we are planning something a little cheaper and closer to home lol.
Goals:
Finish the Bigfoot novel
Find a publisher for Schafer
Write at least five short stories
Plan a successful WV Writers literary event in my region
Surprise! Today you can buy my new Kindle-only novelette, “Antique Bed” for only $0.99! Tell your friends, your enemies, your pets… As kids we always used to say that the old hardware building was haunted. I don’t believe it no more—at least I don’t think so.
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