That New Year's Thing

Well, I had a blast for New Year's Eve! We had literally all of our family in the surrounding area crammed into our tiny house (including us - 10 people and a dog!) Everybody brought way more food than they should have, so it went over quite well :) We all played Wits and Wagers as well as Mad Gab, before watching the ball drop.

Being decidedly of German descent, we did our age old tradition of pork and sauerkraut for New Year's dinner. The more sauerkraut you can cram down your gullet, the more GOOD luck you will supposedly have for the coming new year. (They had to make up SOME good excuse to eat rotted cabbage!)

For the record, I ate more sauerkraut this year than any other year previously. Despite the tears in my eyes. (And that's after mom pre-rinsed it and added brown sugar to take the edge off... and after mushing it in with my stuffing and mashed potatoes...) That means lots of good luck for me!

I have some pretty lofty goals this year - goals that are concrete and will probably take me the entire year to complete. Here are some, in no particular order:

1. Pen 500,000 publishable words. (Including but not limited to 6 IH episodes, 3 novels, 3 short stories.) This should be achievable if I write 5days/week, 2k/day!

2. Lose at least 40lbs. (The holidays were not kind to me :P... or rather, I was too kind to myself...)

3. At least, triple the royalties earned last year. (Which is to say, I still won't be making mortgage payments or swimming in my own pool of gold coins like Konrath ;D)

4. Try to go through every box I have in the house, and really throw away/condense it down.

5. Publish at least 1 new piece per month. Period - no excuses! (Compendiums and omnibuses excluded!)

So, what do you think of my short list? :)

Moving Forward...

My head has been an absolute whirlwind the past few days!

I think I've finally settled down into a long-term mindset. I know everyone says, "This isn't a sprint - it's a marathon!" but the fact is, my bills don't feel the same way. For them, this race was over yesterday (plus interest!)

I'm engaged and one of the stipulations for accepting the engagement was that it had to be at least 2 years long, because I wanted to pay off my debts before tying the knot (Or: I want to start the marriage with a clean slate.)

I'm 26. I want kids someday. I don't want to be 50 and changing MY kid's diapers (grandkids, maybe okay). I don't really want to wait 2 years, I love my fiance and he's nothing but good for me.

For now, I'm just going to "Keep on keepin' on". After my initial crazy settled down, I can think about the whole publishing thing more rationally, and how I need to move onto Phase 2 (It looks a lot like Phase 1)

Phase 2: WRITE MORE!!!