Happy New Year!

fosteronfilm and I rang in the new year at sfeley‘s with a crew of similar-minded SF/F geeks and geekettes. There was pizza, delicious homemade chambord and grand marnier chocolate truffles, Doctor Who watching, booze (some impressive bottles of single malt scotch . . . which I didn’t partake of as I wanted to remain conscious through midnight), and Arkham Horror, a board game based on Lovecraft’s Cthluhu Mythos.

Is there a better way to celebrate the end of the year than with elder gods?

Steve also had a copy of Hub #1 since Escape Pod and Pseudopod have ads in it. As I haven’t received my contrib. copy yet, I grasped upon it eagerly. “Wanting to Want” is the last story, which is way cool, and the magazine itself is an absolutely gorgeous thing. Each page is glossy and thick, and the fiction is lavishly illustrated with full color photos. The production values are awesome. And, of course, they had the impeccable taste to publish one of my stories.

Great fun, great people.

And so I bid 2006 a fond farewell and welcome 2007 with eager anticipation, newfound peace, and hope.

Happy New Year!

   

Writing Stuff

2006 was quite a year, both writing-wise and life-wise, filled with uncertainty and stress, new opportunities, gladful accomplishments, and some humbling disappointments.

Looking over 2006’s Writing Resolutions, I determined to:

–Write 500 words a day, every day, barring weekends and holidays, to total 115K words (or more) for the year.

When I first compiled my numbers, I was quite chagrined as I normally only include my fiction word counts, and I’m clocking around 47.5K words of fiction this year, which is not only missing my resolution goal but is also a huge drop from last year’s 106.5K. But thinking back over 2006, I find that it’s not accurate for me not to include all the nonfiction I did as it was the first year I decided to try my hand at cranking out vasty gobs of nonfiction for pay. So, on the nonfiction front, I did about 42K words of “for hire” work and 14.5K words in articles and for my Writing for Young Readers column. Counting on my fingers and toes, that comes to 104K.

Not the 115K I was aiming for, but a much more respectable total.

– Stick with the working during the day holed up in the library strategy.

That worked out dandy for most of the year, but now I’ve got a fabu day job which effectively makes this one null and void.

– finish a @#!$ novel. Any of the several that I’ve started.

Well, this one was a dismal failure. Sigh. I think with everything else going on in my life–most notably the financial stressors of not having a reliable income a la day job–I just wasn’t in a good mindset to be able to devote so much of myself to this task. I’m hoping that I’ll have the balance and discipline in 2007 to finally accomplish this.

Moving on to 2006’s highlights and accomplishments, I:
– Became The Town Drunk‘s Assistant Managing Editor and saw its first issue and subsequent stories published.
– Survived another year as Tangent‘s Managing Editor and The Daily Dragon‘s Editor/Director.
– Made 28 sales including one to a closed DAW Books anthology, repeat sales to Realms of Fantasy and Paradox, and broke into Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show.
– Was invited to and began writing a regular column, Writing for Young Readers, for Writing-World.com.
– Saw 33 works published including two stories in “Best of” collections, a Hungarian reprint, two French reprints, a Greek reprint, and four audio podcasts.
– Received three Honorable Mentions in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror 19 (edited by Ellen Datlow, et al.): “The Bunny of Vengeance and the Bear of Death,” “Returning My Sister’s Face,” and “The Tiger Fortune Princess.”
– Received another HM in The Year’s Best Science Fiction 23 (edited by Gardner Dozois) for “The Bunny of Vengeance and the Bear of Death.”
– Received a thumb’s up from Publishers Weekly for “Returning My Sister’s Face” in their starred review of Best New Fantasy.

2006 wasn’t too shabby, all-in-all.

And herein my Writing Resolutions for 2007:

– Finish a novel. Once session ends, I want to really focus on this.
– Write 500 words a day, every day, barring weekends, holidays, and the legislative session. I think my annual word count is going to have to go down as I’m effectively crossing out three months of the year to write during, but it’s a reasonable trade-off, all things considered.
– Don’t stress the hamsters and don’t be afraid to turn some away. I need to realize that I’ve pretty much taken on as much writing work (or more) that I can cope with. Now that I’ve got the shiny, new day job, I’ve got the leisure of picking and choosing new projects I accept and embark upon rather than feeling obligated to take on anything and everything that crosses my plate.