My year 2016

[image error]It is time again for the monthly blog hop Do You Have Goals, hosted by Misha Gericke and Beth Fred.

Not much happened in my writing life during December. Perhaps it would be appropriate at this time to look back at the entire year 2016 and think about my goals for 2017.

Short stories

I wrote several short stories – don’t remember the exact number. Seven of my fantasy stories and two of my science fiction stories have been either published during the year or accepted for publication in 2017. The latest acceptance email arrived yesterday: my story made it into the IWSG anthology Hero Lost. The publisher, Dancing Lemur Press, sent me a contract for my signature this morning.

I also wrote a fan-fiction story Five Days of Elf, based on Wen Spencer’s Elfhome universe, and self-published it on wattpad. You can read it here.

My goals: I’m thinking of self-publishing a collection of my short stories, but first I want all of them published in magazines. I guess, my goal is to keep submitting my remaining unpublished stories: 4 fantasy, 1 sci-fi, and 2 magic realism stories. I’m going to refrain from writing short fiction for now… unless a story needs to be told, of course.

Novellas

I wrote a steampunk novelette Open, Charlie and self-published in on wattpad. You can read it here.

My regency novella Fibs in the Family on wattpad is doing very well. It has collected over 15K readers, and the numbers keep climbing. People read it and people like it. The story has almost 1,000 Likes by now.

My goals: finish my second regency novella.

Novels

Didn’t write anything. This section is dedicated to my goals.

My goals: for my 2 fantasy novels, published by Champagne Books in 2014, the copyrights are expiring in the beginning of 2017. I contacted the publisher, and they promised to pull the novels from all retailers and send me the official letter by the end of January. After that, I’m going to make new covers, re-edit the novels, and self-publish. I also want to self-publish other novels in the same series. I have several more, in different stages of development. One needs a last revision. A couple need serious re-writes – only the first drafts are written. One I started writing in 2015 and then abandoned. I want to return to it. Not sure I could do it all in 2017.

Non-fiction

Wrote 25 articles for my newspaper. The newspaper is a weekly, so the number means on average 2 articles a month – approximately a piece every other issue.

Also read many books – the exact number eludes me, but I read a lot – and wrote and published reviews for most of the books I read on GoodReads and BookLikes.

My goals: No specific goals except keep writing book reviews and articles for my newspaper.

Art projects

This is my favorite part. I started creating digital art in 2016. By now, I made several badges for the WEP writing challenges and a BINGO card for the Romance Reading Challenge on BookLikes. People seem happy with my designs.

Created a number of book covers for wattpad writers. Not everyone accepts my covers, of course – the competition is steep, as many aspiring cover designers offer their creations on wattpad – but by now, 11 of my covers are working, representing stories that are not mine.

Made covers for all of my stories too, of course, and now working on the new covers for my novels. Those are harder, as they would have to be competitive on Amazon and other retailers. Maybe I should find a professional cover artist for them? Still cogitating.

You could see most of my digital art projects, accepted and currently pending, on this Pinterest board.

My goals: keep doing it. I love making digital covers and badges! Love it!