Resolutions and Results

“Hindsight is 20/20,” so they say. Honestly, I’m like a lot of people who can’t wait to be done with 2020. “Don’t let the door hit you,” is my attitude toward an awful lot of public figures this year. Still, I guess I’m enough of a masochist to try and salvage what knowledge I can from the unrelenting fiasco we’re all still in the midst of.

I did make some resolutions last year, so let’s review what became of them.

1) Increase my sales over 2019. It’s risky to make a resolution like this, because it isn’t under my control. So this was more of an over-arching goal, which the other resolutions were meant to support. It may not be a surprise that this didn’t go so well.

2) Write two novellas (Minstrels of Skaythe #4 and #5) and publish two novellas (Minstrels of Skaythe #3 and #4) in May and November, respectively. I was partly successful with this goal. I did publish The Ice Witch of Fang Marsh as planned. I did write Prisoners of the Wailing Tower, as well. However, it took long enough that I didn’t feel comfortable with a November publication. Instead, I combined the first three Minstrels of Skaythe novellas into a trade paperback, aptly titled Minstrels of Skaythe. So there were two publications in 2020, just not exactly the ones I had intended.

3) Host a fantasy book event, Queen Titania’s Court, across June of 2020. The response was pretty thin, and I ended up filling an abbreviated schedule mostly with authors I had personally invited. Nevertheless, I did host the book event, and it was great fun.

4) Make six personal appearances over the course of the year. This was important to me, because I sell more books when I talk to people than any other way. Due to the pandemic, I wasn’t able to do any of that.

5) Send out a monthly newsletter. Every writing advice site tells you to send out newsletters as a way of building your audience. I tried really hard in 2019 and it just never worked for me. So I let this one go pretty early in 2020 and have been focused on my blog instead.

Over all, I came out 2 for 5 of my resolutions. That’s… not great. However, I’m well aware of all the headwinds we faced in 2020. For the next few days I’ll be trying to decide what goals I should set for 2021.

Have you read one of my books? Then it would be great for you to leave a review! Meanwhile, if you’d like to learn more about me and my work, check out my web site, Facebook, Instagram and/or Twitter.

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