2013 Year End

This is the time of year that I review my goals and milestones for the previous year and bore all of you with the gory details :)

I am well pleased with how well the Lazy Designer series performed. I’ve exceeded sales from prior years, I think in large part helped by the release of the third volume (Gameplay and Exploration) and a print version of the first book. The final two volumes are going through edits right now and will be available next year.

In terms of writing goals, I met most that I wanted. I exceeded my goal of writing 250 000 words this year — reaching around 330 000 words! I also finished the rough draft for the second book in my “Pool” series. I had planned to finish the final draft as well but instead I shifted gears halfway through the year and focused my attention on the Lazy Designer books.

I only wrote one story this year. Instead of writing several, as I tend to do each year, I wanted to focus on one. The plan had been to sell it to a “target market” (the magazine I wrote it for) but that didn’t work out and the story’s now retired. Despite this approach not working, I’ll probably try the same again next year… just writing one or two stories and spending my time polishing them (instead of using my standard shotgun approach). I’m really struggling to place stories in the short fiction marketplace and I don’t think it’s worth my time pursuing this too aggressively anymore. I want to write more novels.

I didn’t quite meet my milestones for story sales. I had wanted to sell five stories. I ended up selling only four (I had sold six, but a couple markets folded and the stories ended up back with me). The four sales were:

Cobbler and Minion to Ruined Cities (available here)
Great White too Oomph (available here)
Inside Magic Circles
Slaying Dragons (here, and as part of the “best of” collection for Plasma Frequency)

In terms of novels, I had a couple publishers ask to see full drafts based on my query letters but no sales yet. I’m hoping this changes in 2014!

I’m also doing more game development work now. Everything to this point is prototype work or stuff for my kids, but this may change next year, based on what happens with my fiction. Most years I plan out my entire year and set goals and milestones but I’m going to be a bit more flexible for 2014. I have only planned out the first half of the year. Depending on what ends up happening with a couple of my novels, I may or may not end up shifting my attention to building a game (or start looking for more conventional work). We’ll see.

Anyways, I hope you all have a Happy New Year!