A look back at *my* 2016

With the addition of Carrie Fisher, and her mother, Debbie Reynolds, to the list of celebrity deaths in its waning days, 2016 has thrown many of us for a loop. I can’t help but wonder if this is the way it’ll be from now on … more of my favorite stars, singers and authors kicking the bucket every year as I, too, get older.

It’s been a pretty awful year, to be sure. Still, some good has to have come from 2016.

To remind myself of that, I took a look back at my stats for the year, conveniently compiled in Jamie Raintree’s fantastic Writing & Revision Tracker spreadsheet. (Link goes to the 2017 version, which is well worth the $8.)

The great spreadsheet tells me that in 2016, I:

• Wrote 36,795 words
• Revised 444 pages

Is that all? Damn. Looking at those totals, 2016 HAS been a dumpster fire of mega proportions.

However, I also:

• Published two category-length novels—Ogling the Outfielder and Stealing the Southpaw—and one short story—Baring It All
• Discovered the Universal Book Link. (Thanks, Books2Read and Draft2Digital.)
• Included Sliding into Home in a bundle with other baseball romances from Kate Curran, Jennifer Bernard, Kasey Michaels, Mindy Klasky and more. (GetThe All-Star Baseball Romance bundle on AMAZON | BARNES & NOBLE | KOBO | IBOOKS.)
• Started sending monthly email newsletters (instead of sending one only when I have a new release)
• Added 1K names to my email list (thanks to Ryan Zee)
• Listened to countless podcasts on self-publishing, marketing and creativity.
• Saw my two free short stories (Baring it All and Contempt of Love) hit 1 & 2 on Amazon’s free Kindle Short Reads (12-21 pages) list. (This happened after I sent a newsletter to all my new Ryan Zee subscribers, highlighting the free shorts.)
• Sold a respectable number of books. Not enough to quit the day job anytime soon, but that’s okay. I continue to work toward that pie-in-the-sky goal.

I’m putting this out there now: Quitting the day job to write full-time is in my 10-year plan. I’m 45 now, so if I can get there by the time I hit 55, I’ll be happy.

How about you? What are your New Year’s goals? How about your 10-year plan?