Erotica by Cori Vidae

It’s time for me to set my 2018 goals and this pretty much sums up how I feel:

Because the thing is I didn’t do so well at reaching last year’s goals, and this year I’d like to spend less time working, and Other Me has already set some ambitious goals and I don’t own a TARDIS…

So… where does that leave me?

Well, to start I want to finish up the 2017 Goals that I didn’t quite accomplish. Goals like:

• Finalize the Author Guide for Pen and Kink Publishing and begin distributing it
• Formalize the style guide for Pen and–you know what? Nah, I kinda like having ‘Something like a style guide’
• Edit and publish “The Longest Night”
• Edit and publish “The Coolest Wife Ever” now known as “The Switch”
• Publish a collection of all the “She’s on the Bottom” stories
• Finish writing and editing the untitled novelette/novella? about Ben and Maggie
• Write at least one more story in the Paranormal Circus series.
• Write and share a holiday-themed story set in the Paranormal Circus series

And because I don’t want to spend this year solely focused on the things I didn’t do last year I would also like to:

• Successfully publish and launch Magic Spark
• Successfully publish and launch Magic Ember
• Successfully publish and launch Magic Flame
• Successfully publish and launch Triskaidekaphilia 3: Transformed
• Acquire a new project for Pen and Kink
• Write at least one short story and submit it for publication rather than publishing it myself*
• Write the next title in the ‘Running on Empty‘ serial

That looks like plenty of projects to fill a year, yeah?

*I chose submitting as my goal because that is within my control, whether the story is accepted somewhere or published is not.

At the start of each year I set goals for myself, share them publicly (for accountability) and then at the end of the year I assess how well I did in reaching them.

I started 2017 off like this:

And I ended it something like this:

And to show you why I’m going to break down all my 2017 goals one by one, looking at what I did and didn’t do… Items are are bolded are goals I consider achieved.

2017 Goals:

This year is going to be one of doing a lot of things behind the scenes. That stuff isn’t particularly sexy, but it does need to be done. For example:

• Create an Author Guide for Pen and Kink
  • While this isn’t totally complete I think most of the hard work is and right now it just needs an introduction and a bit of clean-up and it will be good to go. I’m going to count this as done even though it’s not quite, because it took a lot of work that I feel I ought to recognize.
• Formalize the Style Guide for Pen and Kink
  • Totally nope. The Style Guide for Pen and Kink is still in a .doc file entitled ‘Something Like a Style Guide’ so… yeah…

On a demon-y level I want to:

• Publish “Circles Within Circles”
  • I did this, so yay! However, I think I made a mistake with the cover and I’m going to need to get a new one and re-publish it. So… that’s less fun?
• Edit and publish “The Longest Night”
  • Not yet. Though I do have an editor lined up, so that’s progress? I guess?

Under Glass for “She’s on the Bottom” I want to:

• Edit and publish “The Coolest Wife Ever”
  • …I still haven’t figured out how to end this one. *sigh*
• Publish a collection of all the “She’s on the Bottom” stories
  • Not yet, it’s still waiting on me to finish “The Coolest Wife Ever” which I’ve actually re-titled again to “The Switch”.

Related to “Paranormal Circus” Under Glass I want to:

• Finish writing and editing the untitled novelette/novella? about Ben and Maggie
• Write at least one more story in this series.
  • Preferably two 
• Write and share a holiday-themed story set in this series

I didn’t get any of my Paranormal Circus goals accomplished. I made progress on them, but nothing very exciting. I’m just really, really failing at consistency when it comes to this series. I don’t think it’s because of the stories though, I think it’s because Other Me was pretty over-scheduled. If I don’t make progress on them this year, however, I’m definitely going to need to consider dropping this project. Which will make me sad because there’s something about these stories that really, really inspires me.

…which might be part of the problem. They are actually kind of intimidating — trying to get everything to connect together correctly and layer properly. It’s sort of paralyzing.

I’ve also got some editing and publishing-related goals. First, for editing:

• Release and promote kINKED — beating the sales I had for Rough Edges
  • Rough Edges sells better than kINKED. Guess people just like cowboys more than ink, or at least the audience i’ve managed to reach so far.
• Have a successful submission period for the anthology I’ll be co-editing with Laura Harvey (details to come)
  • We had to postpone this anthology indefinitely.
• Read submissions to the World Weaver Press open submission period with an eye toward picking up one paranormal romance to edit in 2017 for publication in 2018
  • Read. Requested. We’ll see how it goes.
• Edit the Enchanted series (all three books)
  • Finishing up the editing on this but we’re only a wee bit behind schedule and had lots of challenges so I’m counting it as a win.

And lastly, as a micro-publisher at Pen and Kink

• Publish and promote kINKED
• Publish and promote Legendary edited by Laura Harvey
• Publish and promote Ravenous edited by Ariel Jade
• Line up an editor for the third book in the series
• Continue to promote our existing titles. In part through a big sale in February.
• Prepare the Enchanted series for release in early 2018
• Publish the Demon-y and Under Glass stories mentioned above
  • This is kind of a repeat from my goal above… but kind of not

…so, I’m not really sure how I feel about 2017. As an editor and a publisher I feel like I did okay, but I really fell down as a writer. I did have a story in Covalent Bonds though, which makes me happy because I’d like to continue to ensure that all my writing isn’t self-published.

But still.

Not a bad year, professionally, by any means. But not a great one either.

I’m looking forward to dedicating more time and attention to my own writing in 2018. *fingers crossed*