Happy New Year!

2019 was a wild ride, and I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one that feels that way. 2020 is already shaping up to be pretty amazing (I start my new job tomorrow!), but US politics is sure to make everything else fairly chaotic. However, I was published again in 2019! Z Publishing House was kind enough to invite me back for their Emerging Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers: Northeast Region collection, which is available for purchase here. My story is titled Interstellar: Apollo to Atlantis, and yes, you know it better as space thieves. I may have some other news coming up soon on the writing front, too, so keep your eyes peeled!

My goals for this year are again broken into categories, though four this time: fitness, reading, writing, and blogging, and while some of them are similar to last year, some of them are wildly different, and I’m so excited!

fitness

Similar to last year’s goal, I’d like to finally accomplish that handstand & forearm stand away from the wall. I worked so hard on it all 2019, and I’m close enough with the forearm stand that I think I’ll be able to get myself comfortable in both. I’m not saying I want to kick up into either in the middle of a class, but I’d like to be able to do that on my own in a home practice.

As I wrote in my 2019 Goals wrap-up, the second half of the year wasn’t great for me physically, and I’m still working on getting back to it. I’ve been making little steps here and there, though, and yoga is, as always, helping a lot. I also had a 2020 goal that I set at the beginning of 2019, which was to successfully do one pull-up by the end of 2020, but I’m honestly not sure if that’ll realistically happen, so I’m going to focus on my inversions.

reading

Did you check out my Top 10 Reads of 2019 already? Because it’s live, and it’s all probably totally expected. I have not at all been quiet about the books that I loved this year. I really tried to get 10 goals again this year for reading, but I’ve got a lot going on, and my reading is definitely going to take a dive in sheer amount, so we landed at seven.

1. Read 100 books. I recognize that this is shorter than most years, but there are some changes coming up in my life that mean I won’t have as much free time as before, so I don’t want to stress myself out, and 8 books a month is totally doable.
2. Catch up on all currently published Shadowhunters books. This will mean the entire The Dark Artifices trilogy, The Red Scrolls of Magic, and Ghosts of the Shadow Market. This does not include anything published in 2020.
3. Finish all outstanding series from 2019. Oh boy. I should make a list of these at some point.
4. Read one classic OR nonfiction per month. I have some classics leftover from 2019 that I had plans for in the first half of 2020, but after those are done, I have no more owned unread classics, so I’m hoping to get through some of my backlist nonfictions.
5. Review LOTR & Book of Lost Tales. I’ll hopefully have Fellowship of the Ring read in January, so this will only be a total of four books for most of the year, but it’ll get me started on the thirteen-volume history of Middle-earth, and I’m really excited for that.
6. Read all 2019 books before the end of the year. As of this post, that’s 72 books!
7. Stick to my monthly TBRs!

I feel like these are doable? I’m really trying not to stress out about reading this year. Last year, I got into this mindset of only reading my 2018 backlist books from 2018 in order of purchase with absolutely no wiggle room, and it nearly threw me straight into a reading slump. I finally realized that finishing my 15 leftover books from 2018 before the end of 2019 wasn’t going to do anything but make me exhausted, so instead, I’ve given myself the whole year to just read whatever I want from my physical TBR. I’ll still be setting monthly TBRs, but I don’t have a list in my head of what should come first.

I do still want to keep up with preorders, which I will have a TTT post up about very soon, but reading is going to be super lowkey and fun for me this year.

writing

IT’S TIME FOR SOME INSANITY!

1. Edit sister witches 1 & 2 into final drafts.
2. Write the first draft of sister witches 3, which will complete the trilogy.
3. Write the first draft of vampire detective.
4. Write the first draft (FINALLY) of Mason.

Okay, I know that’s a lot. Literally three brand new books, plus editing two into final drafts. And I’m not even going to be finished writing sister witches 2 when the year starts, so it’s kind of like three and a half books, but here’s the thing. These three stories are so tightly interwoven with one another that it’s going to be pretty hard not to write them. Seriously. I’ve started pulling their threads together in the second sister witches, and it’s really making me want to write the rest of them.

And I know. I’m going back to Mason, a story that nearly made me quit writing. (He didn’t, but he was what I was writing when it all fell apart.) But something is telling me it’s going to work this time. We’re going to figure it out, he and I. It’s time to fight for each other.

blogging

Look, a new section! I actually have some goals for the blog going into the New Year, instead of just winging it like usual, so here’s what to expect:

1. An actual schedule! I’d like to post three times a week (Mon, Tues, Wed), which is what I’ve kind of been trying to do this year with only about half success. January is already all scheduled out, though, and as long as I get everything written, that should happen for the entire month, so I’m going to try to pre-schedule for each month and then pre-write posts each weekend.
2. Discussions. I love reading other people’s discussion posts, and again, January should help get me into the groove for this. (Don’t worry, all my January hints will be revealed in a few days.)
3. Book reviews! These, uh, will honestly mostly be Tolkien posts, but eventually, I’d like to get into the habit of long-reviewing other books outside of the Middle-earth universe.

Only a few goals, but I’m really hoping to be able to dedicate specific time to work on my blog and shape it into something a little more impressive.

Sticking with tradition, one of my 2020 goals is also to love these little chickens more than ever this year! They’ll be turning six in April, which just blows my mind, and every single day, I could just squeeze them breathless, that’s how much I love them.

Are you setting any 2020 goals?