I’m not one for making New Year’s resolutions, but I do like goal setting. So here’s a look at how well I met them last year.

The number one goal was writing my novel. I finished the first draft and am about halfway through revisions. Then, I’ll send it to Richard Thomas for line-edits. Once he sends it back, I’ll do one more round of edits before sending it out to agents and publishers. I’m happy with this, even though I’d hoped to have it in Richard’s hands by the end of the year. The novel is coming along nicely. It’s dark, tense, and disturbing, with a touch of humor and, maybe even, hope. I’m excited to share it with readers.

I’d planned to revise and submit 16 short stories. I’ve finished 8. Those, along with a few stories that were completed the year before, plus a few poems were submitted 71 times. My goal was 100 rejections and a few acceptances. Didn’t quite hit the rejection mark, but my short story “Wolf’s Bane” and two poems, “Haunted Basin” and “Witch’s Garden”, were accepted to publications I’m honored to have work in.

Intersections: Science Fiction, Fairy Tales and Myth workshop led to six new stories. Plus, I signed up for a couple micro-fiction challenges with The New York City Midnight Challenge, as well as, wrote a new story in the short story challenge.

My goal of reading 52 books last year fell short, at only 37. But including the 8 novels I read and critiqued for my peers and all the flash stories read and reviewed for Flash Fiction Online, I feel pretty good about my reading for the year.

All in all, it was a pretty successful year, amongst all the chaos. Next week I’ll post goals for 2021!