Peering at 2012

Well, obviously it's going to be a brilliant year!

Our January is packed already, and I'm determined to make the most of my last long summer with my daughters (Tasmania is going to 4 terms next year, so the summer holiday will be more of a punctuation point and less of a long, lazy sprawl). Raeli turns seven (SEVEN) and my godson Felix turns four (SERIOUSLY, FOUR?) before the end of the month. There will be parties.

Then there is ROR, a week of critiquing and industry chatter with some of my favourite writing people, right at the end of January, culminating in The Very Much Launch of Reign of Beasts Book Three of the Creature Court on the 2nd February.

The book I'm taking to ROR is Fury, book one of a proposed Nancy Napoleon series. I'm allowing myself 1-2 months afterwards to knock the book into post-ROR extra shiny shape, and then sending it off to my publisher to see if they're interested in taking another twirl around the dance floor with me.

And then… well, then I wait. Because after a year of grants and publishing deadlines, I'm fancy free for the rest of the year. It's… exciting and alarming. Given that I'm not going to start work on Nancy #2 until I have a publisher secured for her, I can write anything I want.

So there are plans, but they are nebulous, and multiple-layered, so I can bend to the wind. Anything I work on has to be dropped like a hot potato if Nancy comes up trumps, and if she doesn't… well, I need to have the next thing up and running, and if that doesn't work, the next thing…

I'd like to produce at least one publishable full length manuscript (not counting Fury) and one publishable children's chapter book this year. That's my plan. But I'm not 100% sure which books those will be.

And I have to do it without exterior deadlines. So deep breaths and inspiration at the ready. GO!

In the rest of my life… well, I still have a few more months to serve on the Tiptree jury, and we're getting to the crunchy end of that, so more reading for me. I am planning to have a good go at the Australian Women Writers Reading Challenge 2012. And Last Short Story, of course.

But apart from those things (heh, I KNOW) I want my reading to be fairly loose and unstructured, and my main reading goal for the year is to focus on reducing my criminally enormous To Read Shelf to something a little less likely to collapse on visitors. Which probably means reading & seeking out a lot less in the way of the New Cool. So don't publish any awesome books this year, okay, guys?

Travel-wise my honey and I are keen to make it to the Natcon in Melbourne, because my Mum thinks she is up to taking BOTH GIRLS for a long weekend (or that she will be by the middle of June) which means we could be out on our own for the first time in, well, seven years, basically. We haven't broken it to Raeli yet, though, who had a lovely time at Worldcon and has mythologised Melbourne in her head to an alarming degree.

And apart from that our important job for the year is to keep to a budget, something we've been shocking about in previous years. But if we're going to make it to World Fantasy in Brighton 2013, that means being sensible about money now. Especially if I want to keep my second daycare day for the next two years, before Jem starts kinder. Eek.

So… I don't really know what the majority of this year will bring. But I'm hoping for shiny wonders and domestic calmness.