January was a month of writing. First Born, begun on November 1, had to be finished, and then Dust in the Wind had to be written (I’d only written the first chapter beforehand). February will be a month of editing.

One thing I forgot to mention in my last post was the OWFI contest. A couple of months ago I got talked into being a contest judge again. Then my old friend Vickey came at me in the middle of January urging me to enter the contest. I haven’t been a member of any writing organization for years and didn’t plan to ever do it again, but I gave in and rejoined the Oklahoma Writers Federation, Inc. and have entered four pieces in their annual contest, which meant revising opening chapters and writing the dreaded synopses. That was an unexpected January goal I forgot to report on.

Before I get to those February goals, I need to mention that Dust in the Wind is part of this Second Chance Romance promotion at BookFunnel. You can check it out, along with 29 other similarly theme titles, right here.

Alright, how about those February goals? Let’s start with the three total failures from last month.

• Finish copyediting The War Lord and make a decent cover, then publish it. This is the first novella in my Tarod the Nine-Fingered sword-and-sorcery fantasy series. February edit: I want all four novellas edited this month.
• Another round of edits on Sleeper, the young adult paranormal novel with Carrie Jones, a sequel to In the Woods.
• Record at least one episode of The Werewolf Saga Podcast. (I want to have three recorded before I launch; microphone issues are holding me back.)
• Judge my category in the OWFI contest by the deadline.
• Edit my mainstream novel Yes or No. The beta reader feedback has been very positive on this one, so I’m hopeful it’ll find an audience. A stretch goal here would be to publish in February, but I’m not at all sure about that.
• Inquire about the status of The Lost Pages Bookstore with the publisher I sent it to in September 2022. They stated a 3-month response time.
• Begin writing Stamped, the fourth book in the First Kiss Romance series. I outlined a good deal of it the other day when inspiration hit suddenly.
• Get my TikTok account up to 500 followers. Growth has slowed down, so this will take some work.
• Have at least 10 of my titles up on GumRoad (currently there are two).
• Finish my airplane short story.
• Write the planned prequel story for Sleeper to be given away to newsletter subscribers.
• Learn more about Amazon ads.

That’s a lot. The editing won’t take all that long. Sleeper has been combed over many times, for instance. The Tarod stories have been tinkered with since the late 1980s. Yes or No is in pretty good shape and beta readers didn’t report structural issues or an abundance of typos/grammatical issues.

Looking more long term, my biggest writing goals for the year are the publication of Sleeper, First Born, Yes or No, and The Lost Pages Bookstore if this publisher isn’t interested. I also hope to write the second book in the Cody Treat series (Afterlife is the first) and finish Badger’s Bend, a half-finished Western I quit on during my 18-month writer’s block. Adri Amanti will see two more First Kiss e-books (Stamped and a Christmas-themed story) followed by a paperback collection called Five First Kisses, while Kimber Haig will return with the last of The Professors stories, followed by all five in a paperback collection. I’d also like to see Kimber finish the In Love with an American Minotaur trilogy this year. We should see a new edition of my collection Darkscapes, and the first publication of the horror novel Scratch. Plus all the marketing to try to convince people to buy these books.

It’ll be a busy year.