I set goals for myself at the beginning of each year and then at the end of the year I look back and see how well I’ve done. It’s not about beating myself up if I don’t reach them all, more a way of keeping myself somewhat accountable for my time, and to try and force at least a wee bit of focus onto myself. It’s about time for me to look back at 2016 and see how I’ve done.
Goals I’m considering accomplished are in bold…
Writing:
- Get all the stories from the She’s on the Bottom Erotica Under Glass theme transcribed and make them available for sponsorship
Huh. Well, I didn’t pull this off. I got some of the stories transcribed but there is still one that needs to be completely typed up, formatted and made ready to go out in the world. There would actually be two except that I nicked one of them and expanded on it as a Paranormal Circus story…
- Have a successful Erotica Under Glass event
Define “successful” Cori.
I’m writing under glass. I did a little of it in July, a lot in November and a trickle since then. I’m working my way through some paranormal circus stuff and I have high expectations for it but so far haven’t actually finished a whole lot…
- Write the first draft of The Ringmaster
…I didn’t even start it. I meant to, but then I got distracted by the story formerly known as ‘Masks’. The two are strongly connected with one another though, for whatever that’s worth.
- Have at least one story published that is not self-published
The messed up Lovecraftian story I co-wrote with Brian Rosenberger, “Suckers” was published in Stiff Things: The Splatterporn Collection and it’s not published yet but my sweet story “Critical Hit” was accepted into the Covalent Bonds anthology edited by Trysh Thompson.
Those two stories could not be any more different from one another if I tried and that covering both ends of an incredibly vast spectrum makes me pretty happy.
I’m going to call this one accomplished :-p
- Self-publish Circles Within Circles (optional)
Not yet… but the cover artist is working on the cover and once that’s done I’ll slot it into the Pen and Kink publication schedule, so at least I’m making progress, right? LOL
- Write and give away one holiday-themed story
Well I wrote it and I gave away half of it so I’m going to bold the text on this one. I wrote a Cairn and Mary story and though I’d meant to give it away on my mailing list I ran out of time to get it edited and typed up before Christmas so what my mailing list actually got was the first 5,000 words of the first draft. I’d like to have a polished version of this story released in 2017.
- Co-write a story with Alexa Piper
Honestly, I totally forgot about this — I’m going to have to check with Alexa and see if she forgot too LOL It’s funny how something that can be at the very forefront of your mind at the beginning of the year can slowly slip to the back of it.
Bonus points to myself if I manage to complete the first draft of The Manor or the first draft of something connected to Circles Within Circles.
I didn’t finish the first draft of The Manor (I really need to do that!) but the Christmasy story I wrote is connected to “Circles Within Circles” because it stars the same main characters. I also have ideas for another follow-up story but I should clear some of these half-finished things off my list before I begin something new. Probably.
Editing / Publishing:
- Edit and publish Rough Edges
- Promote it well enough to reach my personal sales goals (no you don’t get to know what they are :-p)
I edited and published Rough Edges. Sales aren’t yet where I’d like them to be but the reviews are mostly positive (Amazon | Goodreads) so that gives me a strong foundation to build from 🙂
- Edit kINKED
- Publish this either late this year or early next year
- Promote it well enough to reach my personal sales goals
kINKED is all edited and ready to go — we’re publishing it early next year (March) and I’m super stoked to send it out into the world.
- Set up the publishing website
Done. And more than just setting up the website, Elesha and I set up the entire business. Figuring out how we were going to do things and getting some titles is what really consumed a huge chunk of this year but I don’t regret a moment of it.
- Publish some of the Erotica Under Glass stories
- This is dependent upon sponsorship
Meh… turns out getting people to sponsor stories is a bit difficult to do when you haven’t build up a readership yet (go figure, right? LOL) so I actually ended up publishing some of the Erotica Under Glass stories even though they hadn’t been sponsored yet. I am still tweaking how this Under Glass thing works and haven’t landed on the perfect solution yet. Maybe some of the answers will come to me in 2017.
Overall it looks like I hit just over half of my goals. All things considered I am comfortable with this. I did a lot of things this year that aren’t represented on the goals I set up twelve months ago — most of them having to do with Pen and Kink — and in no way do I feel like I was slacking off in the least LOL
For example, Pen and Kink published three Erotica Under Glass titles:
Three novellas and a boxed set from Wendy Sparrow:
One anthology:
…with three more anthologies and a new series of novellas with magical stories coming out next year (which means working on them this year to make that happen LOL):
- Legendary
- kINKED
- Ravenous
- Enchanted: Magic Spark
Through World Weaver Press two books I edited were released or re-released this year:
I won NaNoWriNo again oh, and there was also this:
Yes, yes that is Playgirl spokesmodel Lance Hart posing with a copy of The Naughty List.
So, while I didn’t nail all my goals for this year I’d say I did pretty damn well. I’m pleased with what I accomplished and looking forward to 2017!
