Did I reach 2015’s writing goals?
Back in January I laid out the Writing Goals I would like to accomplish in 2015.
2015 was kind of a weird year, and a lot of unexpected things happened (I thought I would have to move, twice, but it didn’t happen either time), so let’s see how I did with my Writing Goals. The original Writing Goals are in parentheses below:
-(Write 800,000 to 900,000 new words.)
And how! I actually wrote over a million words in 2015.
-(Write three new GHOST EXILE books.)
I did this one. I wrote GHOST IN THE INFERNO, GHOST IN THE SEAL, and GHOST IN THE THRONE. Also BLADE OF THE GHOSTS, which isn’t a GHOST EXILE book, but close enough. 🙂
-(Write three new FROSTBORN books.)
I did this one as well. I wrote FROSTBORN: THE GORGON SPIRIT, FROSTBORN: THE BROKEN MAGE, and FROSTBORN: THE WORLD GATE.
-(Write one new tech book: WINDOWS 10: 101 TIPS & TRICKS.)
I did that, too!
(-Write MASK OF DRAGONS.)
I didn’t get to that one, alas. I started MASK OF DRAGONS, and am currently on Chapter 2. I also wrote THE SERPENT KNIGHT, a novella to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the original hardcover release of DEMONSOULED back in 2005. So I only did that one partially.
(-Start bundling short stories into four-pack omnibus editions. For a while I dithered about doing omnibus editions of short stories, but I could never get the covers right. Then I saw that some other writers were doing omnibus editions by shrinking the covers of four books down to 400 x 600 pixel images and then combining them to form the usual 1600 x 2400 image. When I saw that, a light went on. So I’ll start making omnibus short story editions later in this year.)
I did that one with WORLD OF THE GHOSTS volumes one and two. However, I’ve since discarded that idea in favor of creating fix-up novels out of the short stories and releasing them on Kindle Unlimited. It’s working, so far – CHAMPION OF THE GHOSTS had sold more copies and made more money from KU page reads than the WORLD OF THE GHOSTS volumes ever did. So we can say this goal was met, and I’ll be assembling more fix-up novels in 2016.
(-Get up to at least 30 of my books available in print. Right now I’m at 19.)
I definitely didn’t get to this one. I fell off the Print Books Wagon in 2015. I only made a print version of CLOAK GAMES: THIEF TRAP, and that was all. So I definitely didn’t come anywhere near this one.
Some unexpected things happened as well. I was planning to stick exclusively to FROSTBORN, GHOST EXILE, and MASK OF THE DEMONSOULED in 2015, but around the time of Potential Move #1 I was writing down some ideas as a mental break, and I sort of went with it. Five months later we have three CLOAK GAMES books, so it’s funny how things work out.
So I met most of my writing goals in 2015! In a few days I’ll lay out writing goals for 2016.
-JM
Congrats on meeting most of your goals, and thank you for writing so prolifically!
Just found your Frostborn series. Very well done, from what I’ve read so far.
I do have a question: is the “Latin” spoken in that universe actually something more like Brithenig? I’d think so, given how it had a thousand years to evolve, and it was spoken by British Celts/Romans.
Thanks for the kind words! I’m glad you liked the books so far.
The Latin spoken in Andomhaim would originally be the Latin of Late Antiquity mixed with numerous Celtic words, since the founders of Andomhaim came out of sub-Roman Britain. In the thousand years since, it has changed, mostly by addition of quite a lot of loanwords from orcish, dwarven, and dark elven. Especially orcish, since the humans of Andomhaim had the most contact with orcs so far. Like, a lot of the common curse words are actually orcish, since orcish is a more satisfying language in which to curse. 🙂
That said, when the founders of Andomhaim arrived from Earth, they had a complete library of Roman and Greek authors (including some now lost on Earth), so Andomhaim has preserved what they call “proper” Latin, or the Latin as written down in the Roman authors they brought from Earth. So an educated noble would be expected to converse in proper Latin without any orcish or dwarven loanwords turning up, and there would be a difference between the Latin of a noble and a commoner. That was why Morigna’s speech always sounded so archaic to everyone she met – she learned most of her Latin from Coriolus, who spoke “proper” Latin, and she learned orcish as a separate language, and she never mixed the two.
-JM