My book case of TBR books (the short one is research books).

So it’s the day after Christmas and the first real day of my vacation, so I thought I’d get my brain thinking about writing my looking back at my goals for this past year. Considering I didn’t know The Once and Future Queen was going to happen when I wrote these, this ought to be good.

1. Write and publish at least two books. Yeah, so that didn’t happen. But I wrote one, so I get 50% credit, right?
2. Write Isolde and Morgan’s stories for 2018 publication. Nope. But I have thought about both and did some planning for Isolde’s story. And then Sobian decided she wanted her own book…
3. Continue to attend conferences and speak. This one I did and in spades! 2017 was quite a busy year for travel. The highlight had to be the Historical Novel Society (HNS) conference in Portland. Those are totally my people! Getting to sit on a panel with Patricia Bracewell and Mary Sharrat was such an honor and I am soooooo glad I got to meet Leanna Renee Hieber, my sister in all things feminism. The RWA conference was pretty awesome, too, but I don’t fit in as well there because I don’t write typical romance.
4. Turn some of my blog posts/presentations into online classes. This is almost done. As soon as my voice is back to normal, I’m going to record these and get them live. Look for more information on or near January 1.
5. Continue to learn about marketing and indie publishing. I’ve done this. Being Self-Publishing liaison for my RWA chapter helped because it makes me more attuned.
6. Break even on expenses incurred in 2016 and 2017 by the end of the year. HAHAHAHAHAHAAA!!! Um, not so much. I wish I would have made this one. But I am doing better than last year.
7. Lose 30 lbs by my 20-year high school reunion in September, which means exercising regularly and eating right. Not so much. I actually gained more weight this year.
8. Reignite my social life. Yeah not really. But I don’t really care anymore. I love my writing and that is my life outside of my day job.

I’ve already started on my goals for 2018, which I’ll share closer to the first of the year. But there is one I can share now:

Read only books I already own. (This doesn’t include research, library books or those I review for HNS.)

Having been to so many conferences over the last two years (and having a serious weakness for book sales), I own at least 200 print books and probably another hundred ebooks that I haven’t read. So my goal is only read those; no purchasing of new books other than those already on pre-order. *smirks* we’ll see how long that lasts!

Plus, I plan to set my Goodreads goal to 100, since I’ve surpassed that the last two years.

Now I’m off to talk with Guinevere about Mistress of Legend!