Wow, so the past couple of posts on here have been major downers! I’m not usually such a wet blanket, but it has been a difficult couple of months. Let’s talk about something a little more hopeful today, specifically what I have planned for the year! Yes, we’re already over three months into 2016 (where does the time go?), and the basic outline for the year has already changed.

For the first time, I have a couple of things going that are under contract. It’s been a different experience than writing on my own timeline, that’s for sure. I’m not sure how I feel about it. Anyway, the first half of my year is being taken up with polishing Five Moons Rising for delivery to Bella Books. I’m also on the hook for a romantic short story with them.

You’ve probably heard me bemoaning my lack of comfort with writing short work, and this is the year where I’m determined to kick some of that. In addition to the romantic story I’m working on for Bella’s anthology, I’ve also been working on one which will be freely available on my website. It’s called Touched and is a little hard to explain. I’ll go into it more in a future. I’d like to have a writing sample available for potential readers, something a little less of a commitment than a trilogy.

So that’s the first half of my year buttoned up. Once I’ve bundled my brand new work and short story off to Bella, I’ll be returning to Touched to get it all polished and available for reading.

So what’s going on with the second half of my year? That I’m not quite certain about. The only thing I know for certain is that I’ll be working with my editor on Vortex of Crimson, which is out in October (blurb available now). Aside from that is where my plan gets wishy-washy. I’d like to work on another short story, and I also want to start another full-length novel.

Actually, start is a little bit of a misnomer. In the hopper are two partially-written novels, and a novella which I could easily expand to novel length. The big question is which one do I go for, or do I start something new? The part of me who really likes new projects is all for going for a new one. The part of me that likes accomplishing things tells me I should work on one of those I’ve already gotten underway, or for which I’ve developed an outline. (I have even more novels outlined than I have started, FYI.)

Eagerly awaiting my attention are a high fantasy novel that started out as a retelling of Snow White but has strayed pretty far afield, an urban fantasy about a half-demon archivist, and a prequel to the On Deception’s Edge trilogy, though that one is less prequel and more story set in the same universe about 300 years before Jak ever took a bead on Torrin. I have a list longer than my arm of projects I’d like to start. Suffice it to say I won’t run out of story ideas any time soon.

And all this is on top of a full-time job, family life, and ice hockey. I’m confident I can get to all of it, all I have to do now is decide which all of it I want to do.