Happy New Year everyone and welcome to 2019! I hope you all had a safe and wonderful holiday season and a festive New Year’s celebration! It’s back to business for me but I will say that I had an amazing Christmas and an equally wonderful New Year’s Eve.

I thought today I would let everyone in on my plans for the next year, well two years really. I decided that I would create a theme for the year, many would call them resolutions but since resolutions are notoriously broken in the first few months, I felt a theme for me would be a much better solution.

My themes for the year are Productivity and Getting out of my Comfort Zone. So in the spirit of both these things I have made a two year plan. My biggest problem in the past was keeping up my daily word count. No, no that’s not right. My biggest problem last year and the years prior was that I wasn’t treating my writing as a job.

My habits were lazy. Not a nice word is it? Lazy. But it’s true, I didn’t write every day, shoot I sometimes didn’t write every week. I could be found going several months without writing. The result? Sporadic and unreliable book releases, the loss of new readers, and the inability to support myself. Yup I’m saying it; I’ve been freeloading off my Hubby.

We don’t have children so that’s not an excuse. The only excuse I have and it’s a lame one, is that I just didn’t take myself seriously as a writer. I’ve said the words out loud but ouch that kinda hurts when it’s put in print. I shall resist the backspace button!

So here is this year’s plan, my promise to you the reader, a demand upon myself. This year there will be two book releases, the first two books in my new high fantasy series Chronicles of Gronk. They will be released in July 2019, and October 2019 (barring any disasters or emergencies). Then next year there will be another three.

The new schedule for the next two years will have a new book released every five months. Yes, every. Five. Months! This is both exciting and terrifying to me. It pushes me far outside my comfort zone, far far outside my comfort zone.
Part of my not getting books out on time was my inability to keep the deadlines I put in place. I would constantly push them back, I don’t think I have ever hit a deadline and released when I said I was going to release. Horrible!

Now the blog, that’s another thing that I don’t keep a steady schedule to. Last year I made a promise that I would post every month. I did for ten months. The other two I just pushed back my deadline. I had a long talk, a professional dressing down -so the military folk say- with my dear friend who actually runs this very site for me. (She’s amazing)

Well we have set a time every month that I am to have a post ready. Every third weekend of the month. So for me every third Friday I have to have a post ready for her to go over and get up. So by the following Monday it is up and running on the site. Of course in best case scenario, if the post isn’t up and running something has happened to one or both of us.

That’s productivity and a little bit of an uncomfortable area for me. Great deal of expectations have now been planted on my shoulders and I must follow through. Not just for my household but for you, my followers, my dear and precious readers. I don’t want to disappoint you. I want to be a reliable figure in your life. Someone you can set your watch to. You will come to know that every third weekend of the month a new blog post will appear on the site and every five months I will release a new book.

Something else very new will be happening this year. In March actually. I have my very first book signing! Crazy I know, my mother was actually the one who got my foot in the door! She was chatting up the people in a local bookstore and told them I wrote books. Next thing I know I’m setting a date to do a signing. Very exciting and I will be sending out more information, the location and time in my newsletter. So if you want to keep up to date with that, signup.

I think that’s it for now, my crazy news and declarations. Here’s to it being a busy, crazy, exciting 2019!

Here we are a few days away from Christmas and I thought I would take a break from the wrapping of gifts and scrambling to get my Christmas crafts done and reflect back on the last twelve months.

Here we are the beginning of December and you are probably thinking once again- You missed last month! – You’re right I did. I have no excuses, I’m sure if I tried really hard I could come up with one or two, but I won’t sully our relationship with such tactics.

September was jammed packed with work related business that I completely neglected my duties to my monthly ramblings. I apologize and shall commence my ramblings now!

First I want to talk about my next project, Chronicles of Gronk, (This is a working title of sorts). I’ve been pining over this series for almost three years now. When the idea first came to me I was still in the midst of being blocked with how to fix Mechanical Dragons: Air, then I wanted to write Bounty after that. Why? Well I was a little fatigued with writing series and wanted to break that up a bit with a standalone novel.

You know what never ceases to amaze me? The reaction I have to feedback from my beta readers. I’ve written eight books now; one is currently in the post beta stage. The feedback is trickling in and even though I know what they are telling me are fair points it still elicits the same response in me.
I know my beta readers, some better than others, but I know they all have my best interest at heart. I know their feedback is meant to help me and is never a personal attack. I know this, my brain knows this. But my dang heart takes it all so personally.

July has been a rollercoaster of ups and downs. Both personally and professionally. It wasn’t until this month that I fully realized how much those two things are very much the same to a writer. With the emotional turmoil I started the month in it affected my writing greatly. I couldn’t focus on anything longer than a few sentences.