NEW YEAR, NEW GOALS

            Actually, that title is bull. Though this is 2012, the end of the world year (if you believe certain people), it’s just another year to me. It’s also a year where my goals haven’t changed one iota. I just thought the title sounded snappy. What the heck. Maybe it’ll attract a few more readers. False advertising, just like what I was griping about in my last post.

            What are my goals? One is to get Meleena’s Adventures – Treasure of the Umbrunna published. That fantasy story will be my first ever conventionally published full-length novel. It is also the first full-length fantasy novel I’ve ever written, though I’ve written many in other genres. Along with that goal, I want to at least get a first draft of the sequel done by the end of the year. Meleena’s Adventures – Gods of the Blue Mountains is about a third of the way along at this stage. Because of some radical changes in my life this past year, my work flow has been disrupted. I hope to get my mojo back, and that sequel is one of those things that needs to be addressed.

            Another goal is to get my first icky bug novel, The Greenhouse published in e-format. I had a pretty lofty goal last summer thinking I could get it on Amazon Kindle by this past December. Well, here it is January 2012 and I still have no cover, it is on another final draft, and I still have to write a cover synopsis and do some other housekeeping things. At this point, I don’t even want to suggest a target date, but will anyway. How about sometime before the end of the world, whichever date this year the Mayans or Nostradamus think is the correct one?

            My next goal is to finish reading The Factory to my writers group. It’s been over a year, so far. I’m sure they’re getting sick of the colorful metaphors as well as the gore and my twisted humor, especially with some of the downright serious subjects some of the other readers present. I sometimes feel like a standup comedian at a funeral when I read. Don’t worry though, I’m not wracked with guilt about it!

            I submitted a short story to our writer’s group anthology. I’m crossing my fingers the judges they submitted it to won’t hate it with a passion like the last story I submitted two years ago. I never quite knew why they hated the other one so bad, but maybe this one will strike a different chord with them.

            I would love to get more readers to this site. There are a ton of ways I can market myself better. Yeah, I know… I’m just not sure or maybe willing to take some of the plunges being suggested or offered by those supposedly in the know. I’m taking things slow. Maybe too slow, but I want to do this right and at my own pace.

            Finally, I want to thank all of you who have stuck with me since I started this thing. This site hasn’t just been about my books, after all. As some of you may know from randomly clicking around in here, I also have interests in astronomy, woodworking and stories from my childhood. What I haven’t addressed yet, which I might one day, is music. I deliberately left off the page titled music for the time being because I didn’t want to neuter the stories there. My goal for this web site was to keep it PG so my work would appeal to a much wider audience. I want to keep it that way. However, to tell my music stories honestly and to keep them the way I want, there is no way I’m going to censor them for the sake of this web site. That is why I won’t post any of my horror short stories here either. Horror (icky bug) is the only genre I write where I don’t hold anything back. The way I figure it, there isn’t that huge of a market to begin with, so language isn’t really going to hurt the bottom line.

            Anyway… it’s off to the races, folks. Have you set your goals before the end of the world yet? If not, you need to, before it’s too late!