Operation Backlog Completion 2026

2018 Writing Goal Progress

 Writing  No Responses »  Tagged with:
Dec 262018
 

Earlier this year, I set a series of writing goals to complete by 2019.

With the new year on the horizon, it’s time to take a look back and see how things went.

I set goals to:

  • Finish and revise A Prince’s Price.
  • Create an outline for the revisions of The Threshing Night.
  • If The Nightbringer has not been successful, turn it over to someone to critique.
  • Search for an agent for Agent of the Relari, Penteract of Blood, The Nightbringer, and The Time of Adversity.
  • Have at least 3 short stories either accepted or actively submitted to markets.
  • Join a new (paying) video game job.
  • Manage at least 2 side websites for passive income.
  • Participate in at least 3 book signing events.

I finished A Prince’s Price, revised it, and sent it to someone to critique, and now I’m making further revisions based on that critique. So while it’s not quite ready to go yet, I did accomplish what I set out to do.

However, I completely neglected The Threshing Night. In its place, I wrote the rough drafts for two new novels, one epic fantasy and one YA fantasy romance.

After some… missteps, I did find a new reader for The Nightbringer and have gotten some feedback already. Now I’m just waiting for the rest of her critique so I can begin editing.

I continued to search for an agent. Although I haven’t had success so far, I did get my first full request for Starlight and Steel (formerly known as The Time of Adversity).

Moving on to short stories, 2018 saw the completion of Darkling’s Beasts and Brews: Poetry with a Drink on the Side, which I have a poem in.

For the goal itself, I’ve had two short story acceptances I hope to reveal more details about soon, with two other stories I’ve been submitting to markets.

As a game writer, I handled the scripts for several mobile visual novels and also joined a few new projects, so things are right on track!

Now let’s take a look at the next goal, “manage at least 2 side websites for passive income.” Since I don’t like to have ads on this site, I thought it would be interesting to experiment with side websites to see if I could draw in passive income from ads.

Well, I am running two additional websites: KH Theories for discussions of Kingdom Hearts theories and Lovecraft Video Games to review games inspired by H.P. Lovecraft.

The “income” part of the goal has yet to work out, however. On the other hand, the sites are still small, so it will be interesting to revisit this next year to see if anything has changed.

Finally, I wanted to participate in at least three book signing events, and I did: one at In Your Write Mind, one at my local fall festival, and one at the local BookFest.

So not everything worked out, but all in all, it was a good year. If you set any goals for yourself for 2018, how did it go?

NaNoWriMo 2018 Plans

 Writing  2 Responses »  Tagged with:
Nov 052018
 

Image courtesy of National Novel Writing Month.

Yes, it’s that time of year again! NaNoWriMo is here!

For those of you who don’t know, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. For the month of November, writers challenge themselves to complete a 50,000 word novel.

I’ve done it for several years now, with results that range from me finishing up an 80,000 word novel ahead of the deadline to scraping by with a 50,000 word disaster at the very end.

Last year was the latter, because I barely had an idea going into November, but this year I’m more confident in my story. This year’s NaNoWriMo project is a fantasy novel with a loose retelling of The Little Mermaid that involves an eldritch artifact being taken from the bottom of the ocean.

I’m already over 13,000 words and I have a good idea of where I want the story to go next, so things are looking good.

What about you? Are you participating in NaNoWriMo this year?

Celebrating All Things Spooky 2018

 Celebrating All Things Spooky, My Stories, Video games, Writing  5 Responses »  Tagged with: , , , , , ,
Oct 012018
 

Welcome to the sixth year of Celebrating All Things Spooky! Last year’s celebration went well, so let’s continue the tradition with more horror game reviews and another video game giveaway.

But first…

If you enjoy horror stories inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft, be sure to check out my novella The Book at Dernier, which follows a scholar digging into dark secrets that should have remained hidden, and my novelette It Came Back, which is about a young woman who uncovers a deadly secret in her family’s past.

But if you like your spookiness to be a bit more lighthearted, my novella The Zombie Mishap is a comedy about the misadventures of two scientists after they accidentally create a zombie.

In addition to these, I also have a few short horror stories available as well: “Rokurokubi” in Wicked Words Quarterly, “Sand” (another Lovecraftian one) in The Mad Scientist Journal, and “The Artist” in Final Masquerade.

While I’ve included the Amazon links here, information on all the ways to read my fiction can be found here.

And now let’s move on to the free games.

Another Horror Game Contest

After taking a look at the way things worked out last year, I’ve increased the range of potential prizes:

  • Yomawari: Night Alone
  • Detention
  • Dead Age
  • Lakeview Cabin Collection
  • Five Nights at Freddy’s: Sister Location
  • $15 sent through PayPal
  • You pick a game for me to review!

These copies will all be Steam codes.

If you choose the review option, your chosen game must be something I either own or is easily obtainable, which you can discuss with me beforehand. I will start playing it in November.

Now, as with the previous two contests, your participation in discussions on my blog posts throughout the month of October will determine your score.

Rules

  • No purchase is necessary.
  • Only comments made between October 1, 2018 at 12:00 PM EST and October 31, 2018 at 11:59 PM EST will be counted.
  • 1 non-spam, non-anonymous comment on any blog post here = 1 point.
  • 1 non-spam, non-anonymous comment on a Celebrating All Things Spooky blog post = 2 points.
  • You must use an email address or website URL (or include another way of contacting you) in your comment so I can contact you if you win.
  • You must have at least 10 points at the end of the month to win.
  • The person with the most points will get their first pick of the prizes. The person with the second most points will pick second, and so on, until all prizes have been given out.
  • The winner will be contacted on November 2, 2018.

If you have any questions, please let me know. And now, let the celebration begin!

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