It’s almost a New Year!

And a good time to pause in the lull between holidays and ponder last year’s accomplishments and the coming year’s goals.

Last year I mentioned some of my plans for 2016:

My New Year’s dream includes a new Regency series I’m working on, as well as plans for a contemporary romance series for 2017. 

So how did I do?

Looking back…

The blogs

Though I didn’t mention blogging at all last year, I should have! My 2016 goals shifted a bit, with a lot more attention to cross-marketing with other authors and a new look for this site. I published 110 posts in 2016, many of them spotlighting books by fellow romance authors, some sharing highlights and photos of the three major conferences I attended, my travels, and my research. Some of my favorites:

• From February: Happy Leap Day!
• From March: Dwight on Production, Part 1 and Part 2
• From May: Athlete of the Year?
• From June: From the #Historical Research Files
• From August: Regency Era Codes and Ciphers and A History of Cursed Cursive
• From September: Blast from the Past: A Mini-Tour of Chicago

And then there was April, when I participated in my first A to Z Challenge, posting 26 blogs every day of the month except Sunday. My theme was:

You can look back in my blog archives for each individual post, or you can see a display of all the April headlines in one place on my Pinterest page.

The fiction

My 2016 Christmas novella, The Marquess and the Midwife, was not even a spark in my imagination in January 2016. Early last year, an author friend suggested I get going on a novella for a possible Christmas boxed set someone was putting together. The anthology didn’t work out, but that was okay!

Looking ahead…

My Regency series is still in the works, as well as my contemporary romance projects, but I’m moving the forecast for the contemporaries to 2018. I want to attempt at least one short story (writing short is a huge challenge for me). I’ll keep up with weekly blog posts, but I think this spring will be too busy for the A to Z Challenge. Though I loved the A to Z so much, I hope to make time for it in 2018! Or maybe I could combine that short story with the A to Z. Hmm…

For now, my only planned conference and book signing is California Dreamin’ at the end of March 2017. If you’re planning to be in the Southern California area on March 25, 2017, you don’t want to miss our fantastic Reader Event. Tickets are only $5, and in exchange you’ll receive a $5 coupon for the book signing that follows the party.

Resolution time!

What are your plans for 2017? Whatever they are, I wish you the best, and I’m closing with a pep talk, my New Year’s post from last year!

The New Year’s Countdown is on:

Three. Two. One…

The New Year is right around the corner. Got your resolutions ready? No?

I’ll start them out for you.

In this New Year I will: exercise more, lose weight, spend more time with the people I love, spend less time on social media, spend less, save more…

Yada, yada, ya.

Now that we have those out of the way, how about this resolution?

In this New Year I will work toward my dream of [fill in the blank].

If you’re human and breathing, you must have at least one dream. If you’re human and breathing, at some point in life, you’ve failed at something (or like me, many things!).

And if you’re reading this, on a computer/tablet/smartphone, I know you’ve picked yourself up from your first struggles with the ABCs and managed to grab onto some technical savvy.

So what about that dream, the one that you’ve been moving to the back-burner because it seemed impossible?

Start today with a plan to work toward that dream in the new year, but don’t strangle it with logic.

Don’t smother your plan with a need for stuff. You can cook a gourmet meal on your two burner stove. You can quilt a piece of art with a needle and thread and an embroidery hoop. You can write a novel with a pen and paper.

If your dream is the kind that requires imagination and doing, (as opposed to being) it’s never too late. I repeat:

And follow through!

Finish the gourmet meal/the quilt/the novel. Persevere, and enjoy the journey.

Happy 2017!

 

Images: Wikimedia (2017 meme and stopwatch), all the rest, the author