The best of 2016

I know year end round ups are the thing to do. Feel free to skip reading mine. I almost skipped writing it. LOL

I tripled my views this year, tripled my visitors, average views per visitor remained the same, I doubled my likes (hrm, that’s disconcerting, more of you come but you like less), and double my comments. All in all I doubled my followers. Thanks for coming to check it out, thanks for staying to see what I do next.

I read 80 books this year. Reviewed all of them here except for the ones I beta’d. Those I will review when the authors are ready.

I failed to publish my sophomore novel.

You all were most amused by my post complaining about my child lying to me.

But that was closely followed by my post explaining what a bitch I am when forced to fill a power vacuum.

Of course T is for Twitter, Happy Birthday Me, and O is for Oops were all a solid third place showing.

My Goals, which I flung out there at the start of the year and then tattled on myself all year long about:

– Participate in one flash fiction challenge per month.

√ ROFLMAO – Not so much. Maybe half the year. Shrug. things got crazy this year and my writing took the brunt of it. More on that later.

– Prepare and teach “Nano to Publish”.

√ I did it. And two people in my seminar published this year. I am continuing the series next year.

– Any time I am not actively working on my 2015 Nano Novel…

I dumped my 2015 novel. I plan to revamp it as a pseudo sequel to my Scripting the Truth, set in post WWII London in a film noir style detective work. The main character in the new novel will be the detective from my 2015 nano novel who happens to be war buddies with Molly’s brother. See the tangential bit. wink wink nudge nudge.

– write 2500 words per week on my spy novel until it is done. (After four years, it’s time to put this mess to bed.)

Done. Went through critique round one, fixed it. Out to beta right now. Planning for early March publication.

Non writing goals

– Prepare and teach two classes at the coop for the 2016-2017 school year.

√ Yes and oh mi god are these kids awesome. 3 of my five Nano students wrote more than 50K in November. And I finally managed to motivate my geography kids into doing their homework. Candy, candy is the answer.

– Take better care of my body, ie. stop compulsively painting, crocheting, and writing until my back or shoulder is so tore I can barely use either.

√ I finally got the hang of this by rotating my compulsions. LOL

– yoga daily.

√ Closest I have ever come in my life. I can say with out a doubt, five days a week on average all year.

Things I did not plan on but survived:

The pool board from hell. (Not to be confused with the condo board of the apocalypse. That is an awesome book.) The pool board from hell was, well, hellish. And not just the members are never grateful and snotty bad. But like fist fights, embezzlement, audits by the state, losing friends bad.

A relapse of Epstein Barr. Considering the above entry I will just say better EB that a stay in the pysche ward.

Health crisis for the hubs.

Inability to read for my seven year old. Which led to testing, therapy, testing and finally an actual diagnosis and solution which is WORKING!

And finally my FIL rerouting Christmas from my house to my SILs. The SIL who doesn’t speak to my hubs or me for that matter. Yeah.

2016 can end now please. I am ready for a new year. I hope your holidays are bright, your family warm, your heart full of love, and your mind ready for the adventure that comes next. Cheers!