Well, now that January is more than halfway over with, I suppose it’s time to come up with some goals for the new year, isn’t it? So. Here are some of my own goals for the new year:

1. I entered a “death pact” with a few friends. This pact is to write a short story a month for the entire year. My January story, “Flash Drive”, is mostly complete except for revising according to feedback, although it is sort of a cheat; I started it a few months ago as part of my “Story of the Week” project. My February story is also going to be a cheat of sorts: it will be a final revision of “Burying Uncle Albert”, which needs quite a bit of work. Someday, I swear, that story will be finished.
2. FINALLY put together and put up for sale the hard copy of “The Winds of Patwin County”. People have been asking for this. My goal is to have this up and ready on Amazon.com by May.
3. And speaking of Patwin County, I plan to have another ebook, Tales from Patwin County, ready for sale soon. This collection will contain “Just Like This”, “Burying Uncle Albert”, and a couple of others which I haven’t decided on yet.
4. I also hope to have the first draft of Padma done by the end of this year. I’ve already committed to submitting the first half of the first draft to my critique group by June, so… tick tock, I suppose.
5. I also plan on writing some actual non-fiction articles this year, probably science-related.
6. Of course, I’d also like to sell some more fiction this year. “The Hunt”, which was published in The Literary Hatchet in August (see my Bibliography page for more information), was my first sale since 2011; I don’t want another four-year gap between publications. But I can’t really make “sell more stories” a goal, since I personally don’t have a lot of control over whether a story sells or not. But I can control whether or not I submit stories, so I certainly plan on submitting more. I want to have five active submissions at all times. That’s a tough goal, but I think I can do it. I’ve done it before, but not over the span of a full year. The Submissions Grinder over at Diabolical Plots will, hopefully, help me keep on track.

That’s it. Six goals. That should be enough to keep me busy all this year. If you’re a fellow writer, and you actually read this entry, feel free to post a comment with your own goals.

Happy new year!