2011 State of the Union

As I flipped back through this year, I’m quite honestly horrified by how little NEW words I actually wrote.  Projects I finished this year were the Zombie Category Romance, The Bloodgate Warrior, Ritual Ink, and the initial version of Lady Wyre’s Regret.  Altogether, about 100K.  Ack.  That’s horrible!

However, I did have four releases this past year:  Golden, Lady Doctor Wyre, Return to Shanhasson, and the print version of Hurt Me So Good, with many rounds of edits and promo to contend with.  Not an excuse, but that makes me feel a little better.

I also lost one of my publishers this year, so the last few months have been spent getting my rights back, dealing with cover art, learning how to format, figuring out how to upload my own files, etc.  And honestly, dealing with the grief and anger at losing so much.  Emotionally, it was a tough loss to deal with, and not much better on the financial front.  Not only did I invest a significant sum of money into new covers, but I’ll probably never see my missing royalty payments.

I’ve definitely been busy….but not writing new words.

Gee, I wonder why I only have two projects currently contracted for next year. 

So the big takeaway for me personally is that I need to write more new words in 2012.  I can’t let the business and promo drag me down.  I have to find a way to keep churning out completed works, while dealing with all the other blog tours, giveaways, edits, etc.

To that end, I’m going to go back to tracking my daily word counts.  It might be pretty meager at first, but I’ve got to see those numbers going up.  I have *so many* projects I want and need to get done — I don’t have time to dally.

Preliminary 2012 goals:

1. Finish uploading the Shanhasson series to at least Smashwords and Amazon.  I haven’t figured out how to deal with B&N yet.
2. Finish Lady Wyre’s Regret to my satisfaction.  I’m very close but I have another few scenes I want to add.  I’m having a hard time figuring out exactly how to end it, but I intend to use this as my first Create Space endeavor (if a secret goal works out that I’m not yet ready to talk about), so it’s important that I get it right.
3. Submit the Zombie Category Romance.  Needs one last pass, including the synopsis.

This is all work that MUST be done to keep my momentum going in the right direction.  However, notice there’s not a lot of “new words” coming here.  Sigh.  My wishlist of projects is long, but there are a few that I *must* commit to finishing in 2012.

• Lord Regret’s Price
• Mal’s book, Mine to Break
• Phantom

I’d also like to work on the Keldari Fire novellas later in the year, both to re-release the two novellas that are already complete, as well as write the third I planned to do but never started.  I’ve also been dreaming a lot about Beautiful Death lately.  A sign that maybe I should work on Charon’s book?  I don’t know.  But I have a lot of flexibility with self-pubbing these titles.  We’ll see.  However, I can’t tinker with self-pub stuff if it’s going to interfere with my main publication channels, so no promises at this time (sorry Sis – she’s been dying for Charon’s book for years).

So that’s the tentative plan for my direction in 2012.  Here’s to a more productive 2012!