Happy arbitrary division of time, everybody! But a new year feels good, doesn’t it? I feel good, anyway, like there’s a year of possibility out there just waiting for me to take it.
To get things started, look at this awesome mug my sister got me for Christmas.
Ahahahaha. Sometimes she has excellent taste.
(Sometimes.)
The rest of this post is the obligatory reflection of how 2016 went and how I hope 2017 will go. At the beginning of last year I made a spreadsheet of all the things I wanted to do and gave them general time frames for completion.
I only completed two things on the list, but I think that’s a bad reflection of how the year actually went.
- I revised, edited, published, and marketed City of Hope and Ruin (with help from my intrepid co-writer Siri, of course). That’s no mean feat in of itself, as you guys probably know.
- I also wrote a near-novella length story for To Rule the Stars and went through the revision process with that. In addition, I did both the print and ebook formatting AND the cover. I’m pretty dang proud of that. (The cover in paperbook form is gorgeous and I regret nothing.)
- I wrote and published a CoHaR-related short story/prequel which may or may not have made people cry.
- I wrote several (not sure how much, but probably at least 10K) thousand words on my nonfiction books, both here on the blog and in the books themselves.
- I redid the book description for Shards and redid the back matter for both it and Hidden Worlds.
- I’ve done several drafts of my query letter for my YA paranormal novel.
- I completed the revision prep for the first book of my high fantasy trilogy, which took about six months because it was in a terrible state.
- I’ve continued to shop short stories to appropriate markets.
- I’ve also continued to write monthly installments of my stealth scifi serial (say that five times fast), and have also started posting it to Wattpad.
So how does 2017 look?
First of all, I’ve got a short story collection coming out in early February called The Short of It. It will have four previously-published stories and one brand spanking new one. I’m doing final edits on it now, so I’ll let you know more information as it becomes available. I’m going to test out KDP Select with it, so I’ll report back on how that goes.
I’ve also got Shards in a promotion this weekend where it’ll be available for $.99 (It’s normally $3.99). I’m testing some new promotion techniques, and am also interested to see if the new book description (see above) will hatch me any chicks. More information on that later, too. I may post a Saturday post depending on when I get the info from the promo coordinator.
That’s the immediate future. Other plans:
- My revision of the first trilogy book takes top priority. My mother and sister signed me up for PPWC at the end of April, and if all goes according to plan, I hope to pitch it there. I’ve applied for a session with the acquisitions editor of Del Rey.
- The next highest priority is the query letter for my YA paranormal. I’d like to start querying it sooner rather than later.
- I’d like to continue to try out new promotion techniques with both Hidden Worlds and Shards. I didn’t market HW at all when it was released, and Shards suffered from a misleading book description. I feel like they deserve more/better work than I gave them the first time. If you have ideas/want to help, please let me know!
- I’m going to continue work on my nonfiction book series. The publishing/submitting posts will start back up here next week. I’m also considering moving to a three-times-a-week posting schedule to speed things up.
If all that gets done, I’d like to:
- Finish the first draft of my space dinosaur scifi adventure novel.
- Research, outline, and start a steampunk adventure/mystery series.
- Start a new novel in the Shards!verse.
- Discuss and perhaps start a sequel to City of Hope and Ruin, or at least work on other stories in the same world.
There’s more odds and ends, but those are the main things.
How did 2016 go for you, squiders? Anything really exciting happen? What are your plans for 2017?
(I know typing this stuff all out is a pain, so feel free to link me to posts and whatnot if you’ve laid it out elsewhere!)
