History That Never Was

It’s the end of 2018, so it’s time to look back and see how I did on my writing goals.

• 18 new short stories
  • Met and exceeded. My final count (as of today) is 44 completed pieces in 2018, which includes 6 poems and 38 stories. In addition, I have 16 more stories that are partially drafted, which I’ll be finishing up in 2019. I can attribute my amazing productivity here to contests, because there’s nothing I like more than a little friendly competition.
• 3 new novels
  • I finished Brass & Glass 3 and am putting the finishing touches on the second draft of Wasteland (formerly codenamed island) today. The Camp Haunt expansion didn’t work as planned. Two outta three ain’t bad.
• edit 4 novels
  • The plan was for me to edit Brass & Glass 2, Brass & Glass 3, codename Kyra, and Camp Haunt. B&G 2 was completed and published, and I did my first pass edits on B&G 3. I looked at Kyra and ultimately decided that it would need to be completely rewritten to be viable. But I did get a serious edit in on Wasteland. So again, not bad.
• continue reading and reviewing books for MSJ
  • The plan was for 17 reviews, and I managed to do 20, thanks to some travel.
• continue working on AustenWorld
  • This sort of dropped off our plates, because what we originally wanted the game to be shifted substantially during playtesting, and we’re not quite sure how to proceed from there.
• editing Mad Scientist Journal, our annual anthology (Kickstarter to launch in February), and any other copy-editing work that comes my way
  • I ended up doing the usual MSJ and Kickstarter work, and did an extensive edit on one novel and copy edits on four others. So plenty busy on that front!

Overall, while I didn’t hit every goal, I’m still pretty pleased with how the year went in terms of writing.

Things were a little slower on the publication front, but still pretty good. I submitted 78 different pieces (44 new and 34 old), and had a grand total of 321 submissions. From those submissions (and a few holdovers from last year), I had 12 stories accepted for publication and one more reprinted:

• “There are Still Dragons in London, Saint George,” Liquid Imagination (February 2018).
• “The Glorious Dead,” reprinted in Bards and Sages Quarterly (July 2018).
• “Happily Never After,” The Colored Lens (July 2018). (online here)
• “Parcel Post,” Frostfire Worlds (August 2018).
• “The Cobbler’s Daughter,” MYTHIC Mag (Summer 2018).
• “Justice is Blind,” reprinted in The Society of Misfit Stories Presents … Volume 2 (September 2018).
• “At Least No One Else Will Suffer,” Factor Four Magazine (October 2018).
• “Nochnaya Serenada,” Wild Musette (October 2018).
• “The Marvelous Matter of the Mischievous Monkey,” Young Explorer’s Adventure Guide, vol. 5 (December 2018).
• “Coffin Coffee Table,” to be published in The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts(forthcoming, March 2019).
• “Princess Last Picked,” to be published in Swords, Sorcery, and Self-Rescuing Damsels(forthcoming, 2019).
• “Despite All My Rage,” to be published in A Punk Rock Future (forthcoming, 2019).
• “All That Transpires Under the Night Sky,” to be published in Bargains (forthcoming, 2019).

I also self-published one book, Scenes from a Quiet Apocalypse, and Razorgirl Press published Brass and Glass 2: The Long-Cursed Map.

Tune in next Monday for my 2019 goals!

Tags: 2018, publications, recap

This entry was posted by dawn.vogel on Monday, December 31st, 2018 at 6:00 am and is filed under Publishing, Recap. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.