Howling Good Holiday

Image Courtesy of Lone wolf moon
by AbyssWolf666 via creative commons

2014 will go down in history as the year I used to fill my writing well.
Here is to hoping that I can finish some unfinished stories I started writing over the past three years. For starters, I need to finish up my Orgarlan Saga, or at least write the next book in the series, that is, if it is going to be a series instead of just a trilogy. Then there are a couple other stories I began over the years, two of which are half written.
My writing discipline has slipped over the past two years. I used to write a couple of short stories a year. I need to get back into the flash fiction habit.
As you’ve probably noticed, even my blogging has slacked this year.
This is a good time to compile my New Year’s Resolutions.
1. Blog more often.
2. Write short stories when I can’t seem to form more than one sentence for a work in project.
3. Finish the slush-pile stories, even if they are crappy stories. A finished story can find new life during an overhaul edit.
4. Read more books – especially the fantasy, historical, and romances. Nonfiction titles are handy for researching.
5. Remind myself, I’m a writer – so write…
6. Exercise more. I have a new puppy that is waiting for adventures in the great unknown world of walking down the street.
7. Buy chicks to rebuild the pet laying hens. Our flock took a hit this year when some strange monster ran off with a couple of the chickens in the middle of the night leaving a trail of feathers behind.
8. Create items to take to the farmer’s market in the spring. I can sell my books while I’m there too and let the locals know that they have a writer living in their town.
9. Publish more books.
10. Continue to re-edit already published works if I see a missed edit. This is a never-ending process, and I’m grateful when a reader takes the time to point something out to me that I apparently missed.
I do have a couple of beta readers, but if they really enjoy the story, then they seem to miss proofing errors too, when they are sucked into the story.
11. Make all the ROW80 check-ins. I really slacked in this area last year and may have been my biggest contributing factor for feeling the need to refill the well.
And last but not least.
12. Listen to more music. A must when it comes to writing and setting the mood and setting for a story.

My year in review:
I went to my first RWA Conference – NEC. I’m looking forward to going to NEC again in April. This will be my annual conference, even if I can’t really afford to go, this will be my must-do-thing. I learned so much from the workshops I have to do it again.
Deb Dixon happened. That was the workshop my RWA group held that happened the weekend after NEC. I think by the end of that weekend I was on information overload that may have helped contributed to my needing to refill the writing well.
Finished and published next work in progress. But because the story was on the other end of the spectrum I had to publish it under the pseudonym of Lydia Clark. That is all I’m going to tell you. You’ll have to search Amazon for the book; it’s exclusive in the Kindle Select Program where it is going to stay for a while.
In fact, I’m moving all my books to Kindle Select for a while. It appears that Oyster and Scribed are effecting the eBook sales for most of the Smashwords titles. So I might as well take advantage of Amazon’s program, maybe I’ll sell some print copies at the other sites. I think more people are going back to buying print books anyways. It is only a matter of time before the eBook craze ends and reading returns to the print norm. There’s something about being able to hold a real book in one’s hands and you never need to worry about the battery running low.
Do you know how many times I’ve forgotten to recharge either my cell phone or my Kindle?
By the way, I discovered the Kindle app for my cell phone. I don’t need to carry my kindle with me to work anymore. I can just read those same books on my cell phone.

May you have a Howling Good Holiday!