2015's Goals -- Wrapping up.

Well.
My year got a little turned upside down in the middle, and my priorities had to shift to accommodate, but here's a look back on my goals and what I actually DID accomplish from the list!

New Words, New Manuscripts:

• Another Bronze Age historical (which I will leave vague for the moment though I do know exactly what I'm writing and I'm looking forward to diving in!)
• Orc Saga 3
• Finish my PNR novella featuring Ullr, Thor's stepson (it's about 2/3rds done)
• Finish my Fate of the Gods novella featuring Ra and Athena (it's about... 1/4th done. maybe.)
• Finish Marcus's story, whatever that turns out to be (another Fate of the Gods potential novella)
• And if I can finish all that, then I'll work on the next Bronze Age historical, which may or may not have to do with Theseus and Antiope. We'll see!

Editing/Revising/Releasing:

• Orc Saga 2 needs a round of revisions -- though the cover art is well on its way, and I am super stoked to share it.
• Hippodamia and Pirithous aka TAMER OF HORSES, the bronze age historical I wrapped up in 2014 as part of NaNoWriMo will need some revisions, too.
• And of course, HELEN OF SPARTA is hitting shelves!
• I'm tentatively hoping to release BLOOD OF THE QUEEN (Orc Saga: Book Two) in the fall/winter!
• And an Audiobook of FORGED BY FATE is coming!

On the New Words/New Manuscripts side, I met with a couple of challenges.

• One: I had to rewrite the second half of Helen2, which was my first (unnamed) project. So I wrote it, wrapped it by May, then needed to go back and rewrite/add-on the last 50K words or so. It was unexpected, for sure, but definitely for the best, and I'm really pleased with the end result, even if it wasn't what I had initially planned.
  
• Two: I needed to come up with a brand new project that I was not at all expecting. Sometimes the market turns, and I kind of had to scramble. But I found my new project, ultimately, and I'm excited to be writing it (and also omg want to be done writing it so much!) AND this meant bumping Orc3 to next year's docket, because deadlines. It also meant that I wrote no shorter fiction at all this year. Though I *did* start a contemporary romance, for funsies, as a much needed break after Helen2 which also kind of came out of nowhere.
  
• Three: the floors. In January, I don't think I ever could have anticipated the flooring project of doom. It left us -- quite unsettled for some time. (We're only just starting to unpack our books NOW, for some context.) 

All that said and put aside, I am happy to report that I wrote over 221,000 words in 2015. (151,000+ of those words were Helen2, which did not all end up in the final product, of course, but that manuscript was a very significant portion of my year!) That averages out to about 22K a month for the 10 months I was actively writing (never without interruption, sadly). I'd like to do better next year, I think, and bump that average up to at least 30K, but I feel pretty good about this year's output, all the same, particularly when taking into account all the editing and production work I did alongside it. 

Which brings us to the Editing/Revising/Releasing section, where I accomplished everything that I'd expected to need to do, with a successful release of HELEN OF SPARTA and BLOOD OF THE QUEEN. I'm nearly through the edit process for BY HELEN'S HAND as well, for her release next year! I've got two more projects in production, too -- one of which is the aforementioned new project that I had to scramble to find for myself, and the second is too up in the air for me to say anything more about at the moment. But hopefully there will be more to tell, soon!

All in all, I think it was a solid year. And before the month is out, I'll have a post for this year's goals, too!

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