History That Never Was

Home of Dawn Vogel: Writer, Historian, Geek

2018 in review

Image via BiljaST (https://pixabay.com/photos/new-year-2018-numbers-digit-design-2841114/)

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 2Brass & Glass 3, codename Kyra, and Camp HauntB&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:

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!


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