Writing:
- I published two novels: Crashpoint and Twistpoint. I was trying to publish 3 books in one year, but Chokepoint didn’t make it. It will be out early this year, I hope.
- I learned a lot about working with freelance editors, book publishers, scheduling and timelines. If I can only publish 2 novels instead of 3 per year, that drastically extends my schedule of book publishing until I’m about 60.
- I achieved my goal of writing over 300,000 words. About 192,000 were original fiction, the rest were editing/rewriting of books in the editing stages. That includes 3 novels and a handful of short stories.
- Craft-wise, there are a number of things I learned about myself that I’m either trying to capitalize on or correct. Excessive use of pronouns, proofreading, flat characters, and shrugging are things to correct. Dialogue, how I build a story layer by layer, and work ethic are things I feel pretty good about.
- Business-wise, this year was a learning year. I’ve never published a book before or handled the business aspects of doing so. I learned things like you need to send 2 copies of your print book for copyright, the e-book is not sufficient.
- Marketing-wise, I did almost none. I’m not paying attention to number of copies sold, or pushing the book. They are not bestsellers and I haven’t made more than the weakest of attempts to market them. There are a number of reasons for this that are intentional. Marketing will come later, when at least Chokepoint is published. So far I haven’t found much in the way of marketing that works better than writing the next book.
Reading:
I read a lot of books (I didn’t track how many), a mix of fiction and non-fiction, not just sci-fi. I have tried to read more efficiently, and faster, especially when it comes to non-fiction. You could say that I am practicing badly at speed-reading. Also, I toss away all reading plans, and the TBR list when I enter a public library. I can’t help myself, it’s however many I can carry out of the damn building. And I finally read To Kill A Mockingbird, at my daughter’s insistence. Surprisingly, it’s not a how-to guide, and has nothing to do with Hunger Games.
Day job and family:
Not going to talk about them. This isn’t that kind of blog, and there are plenty of parties in both of those realms that don’t want me to say anything, good or bad, about them. Suffice it to say that both realms are just fine and there’s much I am thankful for and happy about.
Other stuff about me that you may want to know. In 2014, I:
- Visited Spain, France, and Italy.
- Upgraded the Lair a little (mostly lighting, also added another toy Enterprise).
- Developed a fierce green tea habit (3-5 cups a day, usually sencha green tea).
- Built a ton of Star Wars and superhero Lego sets.
- Finished a few video games (but not Total War: Napoleon).
- Saw a bunch of movies, Guardians of the Galaxy being the best.
- Ran in the cold (<55 degrees) and my lungs didn’t become frozen sponges.
- Didn’t get to some blog posts about wonky stuff that I planned.
- Eased past the first half of my expected life span of 82 years.
What about 2015?
I’ll outline my New Year’s Adjustments in a future post.
Accomplishments, 2014 edition