A New Round of Goals

For a year now, I’ve been participating in A Round of Words in 80 Days, and it’s been amazing. I’ve published half-a-dozen ebooks, sold several stories to traditional markets, and made enough money off my writing (after a big dip in writing fortunes last year), to once again dream that I might yet be able to make it as a full-time writer. One of the sticky note on my monitor is a wonderfully practical quote from James Lee Burke to keep me grounded: “One of the things an author can always rely upon is that if he has success, it will go away from him again. When you have some success, put it in the bank because you will need it.”

Although in this day and age, who knows if the bank will still be there when you need it …

Anyway, my goals for the next 80 days:

- FINISH the new version of Chameleon in a Mirror, my Aphra Behn time travel. I’m 40,000 words in, so I think it’s doable. Yes, I thought so in the last round, but getting Shadow of Stone ready for publication took a lot more time than I expected. I don’t have any other projects that big slotted for this round, so I hope finishing CIAM and getting it off to my critique partner is fairly realistic.

- Do a new cover for The Future, Imperfect. The sales for this collection are way below that of all my other ebooks, and when I recently ran it through “Why Isn’t My Book Selling?” almost everyone said the cover was a problem — looked too much like litfic. Maybe that’s why I liked it so much …

- Get the next installment of Looking Through Lace up as ebook and brainstorm further episodes. My sf novella Looking Through Lace is one of my most popular titles, and one of the comments that frequently pops up in reviews is that readers wish there were more. Well, I have more. I once envisioned writing a series of novellas in the same world, and have quite a bit of material already. And now in this brave new world of indie publishing, I can return to it and maybe make a bit more out of all the work I put into those conlangs way back when.

- Release at least one more mini story collection of previously published fiction at 99c. The more the merrier, and the more books I have, the more often I can have a free promotion to get my name out there among the indie-reading-public.

- Revise and submit at least three short stories to traditional publications. I have too many stories I never got around to polishing and submitting, something I used to be so good about before I sold my first novel. But in the epub-world, the value of various lengths is shifting dramatically, and there is now a lot more potential income for novelette and novella-length fiction.

Good luck to all on their goals, whatever they may be!

About these ads