Big Audacious Goals for 2026

I have two Big Audacious Goals for 2026, although neither of them are very big at this stage.

I plan to publish two books this year, Avatar of the Maker and Kringle Once More. The books are already written and edited. The added material (About the Author, Dedication, etc.) are already added. They are formatted. All I have to do is have a cover made for Avatar and upload, then click and we’re published. The publication dates are October 1, 2026 for the Kringle book, and January 1, 2027 for the other.

The reason it’s a Big Audacious Goal is because of the insecurities I feel as a writer. I am one of the many indie writers that doesn’t get many sales. I assume I am not a good writer because of this. In actuality, I am one of the many indie writers hampered by obscurity, the large number of writers in the indie industry, and preconceived notions of indie publications. (And possibly because I’m not a good writer.)

Other Big Audacious Goals — I plan to finish a book this year. I have two in limbo — the romance Walk Through Green Fire, and the Hidden in Plain Sight novel Hiding in Plain Sight. The latter, although close to finished, is a mess, with too much sitting around and talking and not enough action. So that’s an ambitious rewriting project. The former is something I put aside to write Carrying Light, another Hidden in Plain Sight novel that I wrote last year but somehow didn’t put on my Big Audacious Goal list.

Why didn’t I put Carrying Light on my Big Audacious Goal list last year? Probably because I thought writing another novel wasn’t that audacious given that I had already written several. But any new creation is audacious. How could creation not be a shot against the bow of Things As They Are?

So I have Big Audacious Goals. I have other goals, not yet fleshed out. I have ideas, which are not yet goals. I have enough to keep me busy this year.

Three Books

Daily writing prompt

List three books that have had an impact on you. Why?

View all responses

There are probably more than three books that have had an impact on me, but the prompt tells me to pick only three, so I will. These books are very different from each other (and I’m cheating on one of them).

The first book, which I read in eighth grade, was The Dark is Rising, by Susan Cooper. This book, the second in a series of five, is a fantasy novel set in contemporary Britain in the 70s. It’s definitely juvenile fantasy, of which there was not much during that time period. The depth of the fantasy totally captured me, with its Arthurian and fae undertones set at Christmastime. I totally escaped through that book. I read the series again last Winter, and it read just as well to a 60-year-old adult.

The second book, which I read probably 20 years ago, was The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. Although I worry this book is considered New Age pap marketed to those of us who grooved on Carlos Castaneda, those four agreements pack a psychological punch. The agreements are: “Be impeccable with your word”, “Do not take anything personally”, “Do not make assumptions”, and “Always do your best” (Wikipedia, 2025). These could fit comfortably into cognitive journaling (and do make for good contradictions to cognitive distortions). I live by these now, and they offer me a different way of living.

The third book fits the prompt, even though it’s one that I wrote, because it impacted my life. That was the first book I wrote, The Kringle Conspiracy. That book was impactful because I didn’t think I could write a book until I wrote it, and I didn’t think I could publish a book until I published it. I came up with the story when I was in high school, and published it in my fifties.

There are my three books. I would highly recommend all of them.

WordPress is a Mystery

How popular is WordPress as a blog, anyhow?

According to this source, WordPress.com users published over 52.3 million blog posts and more than 4.9 million web pages in January 2024. That’s nearly 2 million a day.

I didn’t realize that WordPress was so big. How does anyone get their posts seen? How do people occasionally find my page? I guess it’s all about hashtags, but I don’t know that my hashtags are all that special; yet I sometimes have those moments where sixty-something people find me. Even yesterday, 15 people found an older post of mine. How did that happen?

I suspect to really be seen, I would have to spend money on their SEO tools and advertising. I don’t have the budget for that, especially for the fact that this is not where I advertise books (at least not very often). I’d have to be a lot more serious and intentional for this blog to be something I promote. I guess WordPress’s workings will just have to be a mystery to me.

Hostinger Tutorials. (2024). Top 23 WordPress Statistics: Defining Trends and Insights for 2024. Available: https://www.hostinger.com/tutorials/wordpress-statistics?gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjwl6-3BhBWEiwApN6_kgCefZ7YZq2h_l318pel9KTNgBKulOMO8vnDd-9-fbWuZwLA7sNG_hoCPdYQAvD_BwE [September 19, 2024].

Spring Break Again

It’s Spring Break, and I’m writing and reading.

Writing: two items at once:

Kringle Through the Snow (Kringle #6)
Carrying Light (Hidden in Plain Sight #5)

Reading:

Reclaiming the Balance (Hidden in Plain Sight #3)

And, frustratingly, I don’t feel like I’m getting too far. Sometimes, things go swimmingly, and sometimes they go drowningly.

Me, before I got old and needed a full night’s sleep:

Shameless plug

If you haven’t found my Vella serial novel yet:

It can be found here.

Read Me!

I have a friend who happily beta-reads all of my writing. This, of course, makes me very happy in return. She’s very sharp at picking out things that need to be clarified or rewritten, and she likes my work, no matter how low-key strange it is. In fact, the more low-key strange it is, the more she likes it.

The way I got this friend to read was pretty simple: I asked a bunch of my friends if they’d like to beta-read a novel, and she was the one who answered. I didn’t single anyone out and ask, because I didn’t want to pressure anyone to say yes. Some people don’t read, and they don’t want to be singled out as non-readers. Others aren’t reading what you’re writing. It would be nice to have more than one beta reader so we could discuss what’s happening, but it’s okay.

If you have a friend who’s a writer, one of the best gifts you can give them is to read their stuff. Even if they haven’t hit it big — especially if they haven’t hit it big! Writers need readers to feel like they’ve accomplished something. We may write for ourselves, but we know that writing/reading are a transactional model, and we crave being read. So give us a present!

Editing into the Future

On my second editing pass through Whose Hearts are Mountains, I realize the story reads better than I thought.

My first edit is for word use, and I mostly eliminate as many of the passive verbs — have, had, has, was, were — with some fixing of awkward sentences as I see them. This gives me at best a choppy feel for the story.

My second edit is a reading edit, where I read to hear the sentences in my head and make sense of them. The book sounds good in my head.

Whose Hearts are Mountains isn’t even the next book I’m sending to developmental edit. I’ll send Apocalypse, which is the merciless edited version of three novels, first. But I have good feelings about Whose Hearts are Mountains that I didn’t expect I would have.

I still have to start writing a new novel soon. The only novel I have left to edit is Reclaiming the Balance, and that one has some necessary stylistic divergence (use of gender neutral pronouns for an intersex character) that I’m afraid will get in the way of its success.

I’m still wondering what I will write next. I have a few leads but do not feel passionate about any of them, mostly because they’re sequels to things already written but not yet accepted. Perhaps I’m looking for a new idea.