My 52 Week Challenge

My Reading & Reviewing Goals for 2023

This year I set myself the challenge of reading and reviewing 52 books. I've read over 50 books a year in the past but I've never reviewed 52 books in one year. This will be a solid challenge as I usually like to give some thought to my longer reviews, and this, of course, takes time. So we'll see what happens.

My 52 Week Challenge: Read and Review 52 Books in 2023

Note: The books listed below are in approximate 'finished reading' order, not review order. Links will take you to my reviews either here on this blog, or my spec fic blog, or on Goodreads. I'm adding to the list every week or so, by the way. This is not a weekly discipline but a year-long challenge! (grin)

1. Razored Land - Book 1 by Charles Gramlich - post-apocalypse (TBD)

2. Razored Land - Book 2 by Charles Gramlich - post-apocalypse (TBD)
3. The Stroke of Winter by Wendy Webb - mystery (reviewed Jan 11)
4. Feast of Fools and Other Tales - S&S anthology (reviewed Jan 19)
5. Clovel Sword Saga (Vol 1&2) by Gordon Brewer - S&S (review TBD)
6. The Hike by Susi Holliday - mystery/thriller (reviewed March 7)
7. Valengetrix: Ghost of Aratania by J.R. Cason - sword & sorcery (reviewed Feb 25)
8. Swords & Heroes - Sword & Sorcery Anthology (edited by me! review TBD)
9. The Viking Gael Saga by J.T.T. Ryder - historical fiction (reviewed March 15)
10. Blackfoot Dawn by John Legg - a mountain man western (reviewed March 10)

11. Across the Winding River by Aimie K. Runyan - historical drama (reviewed April 1)

12. The Judge's List by John Grisham - legal thriller (reviewed April 8)

13. Laws and Prophecies by L.S. King - sword and planet (reviewed April 10)

14. The Troubleshooters by William W. Johnstone - western (reviewed April 20)

15. XLZABK001 by Jon Zaremba - horror/fantasy collection (reviewed April 20)

16. Boy Battles Bot by A.K. Meek - MG adventure fantasy (reviewed May 3)

17. Ray Irish Mysteries (Case Files #1 & #2) by Gordon Brewer (reviewed May 11)

18. ResAliens Zine Issues #6 & #7 - spec fic zine, Lyndon Perry, ed. (promo'd here)

19. Fragments of a Greater Darkness  by Michael Burke - S&S fantasy (review TBD)

20. The Dressmaker's Gift by Fiona Valpy - historical drama (reviewed June 1)

To be continued...

~*~

By the way, I'm a writer too! Check out my latest cozy mystery, Secrets & Scents by Lyn Perry - free to read in Kindle Unlimited.

Best friends Kelli & Jo quit their day jobs in Silicon Valley to open a book and candle shop in Sugar Pine Station, a quaint and quiet mountain village near Yosemite, California.

As they begin renovations, Kelli discovers a mysterious bundle of letters hidden away for over forty years. Each envelope contains an enigmatic prophecy, the first one predicting an Opening Day disaster.

Now Kelli & Jo are forced to put on their sleuthing caps if they want to save their business. Will more tragedies strike? And will they unravel the secrets of the mysterious letters?

Secrets & Scents is Book 1 in a brand new cozy mystery series by Lyn Perry and features many of the endearing and quirky characters of Sugar Pine Station that fans have grown to love from the Ma Tutt cozies, including Mack the Mysterious Cat.

Random Writing Update

Haven't done too well on my daily writing goal (which is a measley 666 words per day for a 20k month). 

Other than this blog, I just haven't written much else. And most of these entries (word count below) fall far short of my goal.

I need to get crackin'! I've got my magical cat series to get to, and finish my biblical fiction story about Matthew, and then wrap up the Max McCannor series I'm writing with a friend, and also write the second half of the second Ma Tutt book (which I started in 2014!).

And, and, and...

Whew! They say confession is good for the soul, but that kinda hurt!

Anyway, here's the tally so far...

Jan - Words 

25 - 375 

24 - 510 

23 - 290 

22 - 150 

21 - 200 

20 - 50 

19 - 280 

18 - 295 

17 - 280 

16 - 525 

15 - 200 

14 - 200 

13 - 90 

12 - 0 

11 - 0 

10 - 175 

09 - 180 

08 - 160 

07 - 0 

06 - 200 

05 - 0 

04 - 290 

03 - 300 

02 - 300 

01 - 760

Totals out to 5,810 words if I'm not mistaken. And with 5 days left in the month to hit an additional 15k? That's 3,000 a day. Doable if I cleared the decks, but ain't happening with my current schedule.

Hey, wait a minute. With this blog post I'm already over 150 more words... Hmm!

What are your writing goals this month...and are you meeting them? Let me know!

~*~

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(via PayPal.Me - an e-book from Tule Fog Press.)

This blog is reader supported. Thank you for your support!

Find me on Facebook where I post nerdy memes and share about my writing projects.

Writing Goals for 2022

Not big on New Year's Resolutions. Mainly because I don't keep them, lol. But looking ahead and thinking about what I want to accomplish with my writing, I guess it's a good idea to set some goals.

The quick and dirty: I will write 2 short novels and 4 novellas in 2022. 

See what I did there? Stated my goal in the positive. Not I want to, but I will. Now, to accomplish that I need to put x amount of words on a page each week. Fair enough. I'll tell you more about that as the weeks pass. Progress reports, and all that.

The novels themselves? Well, I will finish the three-part "Mr. the Cat" series as well as round out three "Ma Tutt" books. (Both series currently stand at one each, which isn't really a series yet, is it?) 

Both are magical cat adventures (maybe cozy mysteries?) and tie into each other, so that there will be 6 stories to choose from by the end of the year. That should help with branding and sales and crossover reads, etc, don't you think?

The other two novellas are finishing projects that I started long, long ago. First one, I'll be wrapping up an MG adventure called Max McCannor (with fellow writer T. M. Hunter). 

This story features a cast of orphans in search of Max's father, who was taken captive to exploit his genius inventions and skills. Sort of steam-punky, set in 1890s and full of fun gadgets.

We have episodes one and two done and just need to finish the story arc, save Max's dad, and put the bad guys in jail! Easy peasy.

The last project goal is to complete my Wool fan fiction series. Episode one sees steady sales or KU reads and is available here, The Last Prayer - A Silo Story. Has over 50 reviews, which is kinda neat.

I started part 2 and just need to finish the whole thing. I heard Wool will be streaming, possibly in 2023. So it will be good timing to finish my trilogy by then. This is with Hugh Howey's permission, btw. He gave all of us fan fiction writers free reign to play in his sandbox, which was super cool.

So that's the plan. To help me track my daily and weekly word count, I'm jumping in with some friends from Keystroke Medium and adding my numbers to our collective spreadsheet. It'll be fun to see how many words we eventually total as a team.

What writing goals do you have for this coming year? Comment below and let's get going!

~*~

"Tip a buck, get a book."

(via PayPal.Me - an e-book from Tule Fog Press.) 

This blog is reader supported. Thank you for your support!

Power of Streaks - 30 Day Challenge

Image by QuinceCreative from Pixabay.

I didn't start out with a 30 Day Challenge in mind. I just knew I wanted to start blogging again. Every day.

And so this commitment to post a short blog entry has turned into a 32 day streak. Started Nov 6 and just passed the month-long target.

That's nothing, I know. But it's helped me get into a different mindset. I used to ask myself, "Do I want to write today?" And the answer was usually no, lol.

Now I ask myself, "What do I want to write about today?" I don't stress about it, but I usually fall asleep with an idea or two in mind and then wake up ready to tackle it. 

I think this will translate to when I start writing fiction more than just occasionally. If I plan to be a full time writer, then I better write, well, full time. Daily. Massive output. So this blog thing is priming my pump, as it were.

Plus I get to experiment with content.

If you've been dropping in every now and then, you'll have noted that these aren't long posts. Maybe 300 words at the minimum, 600 or so max. And the content varies. Heh. I have a lot of interests!

I don't expect readers to visit everyday. But I figure if you like my blog, maybe you'll pop by every few days or every week or so, see what's new and say hello.

Anyway, the power of maintaining a streak turns a task into something fun, building momentum as you see the days add up. My wife, for example, just passed 2 years of daily Spanish practice on DuoLingo. Crazy.

Oh, talk about crazy. In 2019, Seth Godin posted that he'd blogged daily for 11 years! It's almost 2022, so I assume he's kept that streak up! Here are three of his insights (taken from that post)...

• Streaks are their own reward.
• Streaks require commitment at first, but then the commitment turns into a practice, and the practice into a habit.
• Habits are much easier to maintain than commitments.

Plus, like many DuoLingo learners have discovered, maintaining a streak is like "gamifying" a task. Turning something that was a challenge at first into something fun and rewarding. 

Welp. That's it for today. See you tomorrow and then the day after that and hopefully the day after that! (Then you can call me the streak! wut?)

~*~

"Tip a buck, get a book."

(via PayPal.Me - an e-book from Tule Fog Press.) 

This blog is reader supported. Thank you for your support!