So, my goals for 2012 are:

Write 6 novels
Write 4 novellas
E-pub said novels and novellas
E-pub two novels currently sitting on my hard drive awaiting edits and covers
E-pub 5 short stories/novelettes

I have four stories up currently. Once I get thee two stories occupying my hard drive up, plus my goals, this will put me at 22 stories up and on line. I like this number. This is getting close to where I need to be.

Now, considering the average novel is 50k or more and the average novella is between 15k and 40k, I am looking at 300-600k words for novels and 60k-160k for novellas. On the long side, that’s 760k words for the year, slightly lower than my goal of 1.2 million words for last year. Assuming I write on the long side, and, honestly, this is me, so it will be on the long side, that will be just under 2100 words per day. That’s not bad. If I focus, I can knock that out in about 2 hours, one if I’m really good. So two hours a day and I can get through all of that.

I won’t go into what I want to write, exactly, because some of it will be under pen names, but it will get done. I got a shiny new notebook for Christmas and my notes for what and when will go there. Needless to say, expect sequels to Quantum Magic and Galileo’s Stepdaughter. I know I promised one of those sooner, but the holidays kind of reared their ugly head, plus renovations to the house and a whole slew of other things and, well, it did not happen as planned. I’m okay with this, just sorry you all have to wait longer. Expect some promotions when those novels come out.

Now, we come to dreams.

1. Win WotF
2. Earn a thousand a month from my e-sales.
3. Earn enough to cover my work salary from e-sales
4. Make a professional short story sale to a professional print magazine/publication.

You’ll notice I don’t have submit to professional print magazine/publications in my goals. I’m not really terribly focused on my short stories right now. I like novels and novellas better. What I do write in short stories will mainly go to WotF. What gets rejected will go to the pro-zines. I have my semi-finalist which is out among the masses right now. Fingers crossed for me. I’d love some good news.

Well, that’s it for now. I will let you wonderful readers know more as things develop. Happy New Year! Stay safe, don’t drink and drive, yadda yadda yadda, you’ve heard the spiel. Bis bald!

On top of that, last month, I experimented with free ebooks for the first time and it did smashingly well. I had over 1600 downloads total and I made close to forty dollars from sales. I don’t have the exact numbers yet, but I would call it a success. Good things folks, good things.

And I didn’t stop with Dragonsong, I read more and more of her books, going past the Harper Hall Trilogy and into the Dragon Riders of Pern, proper, then branching into the Brainship series with The Ship Who Sang and the Crystal Singer series, and Pegasus. Anything I could get my hands on through the years. And it didn’t just stop with Anne McCaffrey. She was my gateway author. At a time I found JRR Tolkien difficult and dull, I started reading Mercedes Lackey and Frank Herbert, more and more. And I started to write my own stories.

Anne McCaffrey wasn’t the only reason I began to write, but she was a big part of it. I like to think I draw a lot of inspiration from her work, hers and Mercedes Lackey, and Frank Herbert, and a good half dozen others. She was an amazing writer. I loved her tone, her descriptions. That woman could drag you into a story before you even knew you started to read.

And now she’s gone. She passed away yesterday. I’m in shock. I knew she was getting older, knew she had health problems. Her public appearances have been fewer and fewer. Dragon Con was the last one that I knew of. A co-worker who was going offered to take a book with her to get autographed. I wish I had. I wish I could have met her, told her how important and wonderful her work was to me. I’m sure she knew, not of me in particular, but in general how many young authors she’s inspired. I know Christopher Paolini was one of them. I had always dreamed I would meet her at the Writers of the Future gala if I ever won. Now it’s just a dream and I feel like I’ve lost an old friend.

But I haven’t really. Her work is still there, and it will live on and I will cherish each of her books, worn and tattered as they may be from years of love. Thank you, Anne McCaffrey, and farewell. May flights of dragons speed thee to thy rest.

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

Smashwords

Enjoy!

It’s a nice tablet. No, it’s not a full tablet, but neither is the Kindle Fire, and it definitely one-ups the Fire. It’s got a 1GHz dual-core processor like the Fire, but it’s got a full gig of RAM, which you need with a good processor. The Nook Tablet (really, tablet, that’s all you’ve got?) is also on Gingerbread. Touting 11.5 hours of battery life for reading and 8 hours with continues HD video, it looks pretty sweet. Plus it weighs less than a pound. Oh and it’s 50 bucks more than the Fire, but I’m okay with that. No, really. I was looking at an Archos 80 G9 for about $320, so it’s not that bad of a deal. In fact, it’s nice.

All in all, I’m excited. I get to support my favorite bookstore (I’ll be buying my tablet locally as well) and it’s a nice piece of equipment for a great price. And, eventually, I imagine I’ll be able to flash it and throw Honeycomb on there, or if I wait long enough, I’ll be able to buy one with Honeycomb. Nice one B&N!

OH, FYI, one drawback, their “Online chat” is pretty worthless. I jumped in to see if one of their reps could answer a few questions for me and it was pretty much like talking to a computer. So done with that. Not sure how their customer service will fair over the phone, but then, if I flash it, I probably won’t have to worry about it.

Many are speculating this is the highly anticipated Nook Color 2 announcement. From everything that’s going on, it seems a safe bet. It could, of course, be something completely different, but I’m going to keep my fingers crossed for a brand new Nook Color tablet.

However, for it to compete with Amazon’s Kindle Fire, it needs to do a few things.

For one, it needs to be reasonably priced. At 199$, the Kindle Fire is hard to beat for what you’re getting. 8 gigs of onboard storage, Android marketplace, 7 inch screen, access to Amazon’s cloud computing services, dual core processor. It’s pretty sweet. However, it doesn’t have external storage. The Kindle Fire has no USB port or SD slot for all the extra things you want to download. In this day and age 8 GBs just isn’t much. Between Kevin and I, that’s our entire music library combined. It’s actually probably more than 8GBs.

Add to that the Kindle Fire is being touted as a tablet perfect for watching movies and you’ve got a problem. 8 GBs is what? 8 movies top? Not a lot of space there folks, and lets get down to the real nitty gritty. It says 8 GBs, but it’s actually only 6 available gigs. So it’s great for storing a few thousand ebooks, and a few hundred songs, but what happens when you start downloading pictures, more music, apps, etc? Cloud storage, right? What happens if you don’t have wifi access at that moment?

Exactly.

So the Nook will probably have an external storage port of some sort, so bonus there. It needs to be priced around 200$ to compete with the Fire. It also needs to have a dual core processor. The Kindle Fire will run with Android 2.3, so the new Nook Color 2, should have 2.3 or better. If they really want to one up Amazon, it should have Honeycomb, 3.0. Considering I’m already looking at the Archos 80 G9 for about 300$, I would buy the Nook Color 2 if it’s similarly priced to the Archos, but that’s not everyon, obviously. I will be checking on their announcement Monday to see what all the hub bub is about and report back.

I pre-ordered Destined by P.C. and Kristen Cast at the beginning of October, it shipped on the 26th and arrived today, Halloween. Yep, a vampire book on Halloween. I like it. I don’t think the book is actually due out for another week or so. Very nice.

Then there’s the Parasol Protectorate by Gail Carriger and Reamde by Neal Stephenson. Protectorate really impressed me in the packaging because it’s got one of those silky nylon book marks glued into the binding. I don’t know why, but I think that’s pretty damn classy, myself. Now, this might be something the original publisher did, I don’t know. I haven’t had a chance to compare the two. Either way, it’s cool.

Reamde is bound the same way as Anathem, super slick pages, ultra-thin and HEAVY. If more publishers spent the time and care to bind and present their books like this, I think they’d do better. I like cool books with neat binding and extra stuff thrown in, like the silky, nylon book mark. Call me a sucker, I don’t care. It’s neat.

All in all, I’ve been really impressed with the Science Fiction Book Club and plan on staying a member for years to come. Stay classy guys and I’ll keep coming back.

Here is the cover. I think it’s quite shiny myself.

It is available on:

Amazon – 4.99
Barnes and Noble – 4.99
Smashwords – 4.99

And will be coming soon on Diesel, Sony, Kobo, and iPad, but all of my other titles are already available at those outlets.

No really. I like my brick and mortar stores, despite what everyone thinks about them. I don’t think they’re going away, but Barnes and Noble seriously needs to step up their game. Amazon has even dropped the price of their 3G devices. The Kindle Touch 3G drops in at 149$ and their Kindle Keyboard 3G is 139$. What gives B&N? 199$ is pretty damn nice for a tablet. Granted, I’d probably root it, upload Honeycomb and be done with it, provided the innards are forgiving, but come on. 249 bucks for the Nook Color is gonna hurt you guys big time. That’s 50 extra dollars I could spend on books. E-books, at least 10 if not more.

Come on B&N, tell me you’ve got a big bomb to drop in November. Pretty please? So you can stay in the game?

First, there’s X-men Destiny by Activision due out on September 30th. I was kind of hoping this would be an MMO, but it still looks pretty awesome and I do like the “choose your own destiny” type games. Here, watch the preview.

Then, they’re re-releasing Halo: Combat Evolved (Microsoft) for the Xbox 360 on November 15th. I’ve been playing Halo since number 2. Granted, I was just playing online, I wasn’t playing the actual story, but it will be nice to play it from the beginning and see how it all began.

Also, there are going to be two new Sherlock Holmes games, The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Focus Home Interactive) some time at the end of this year and The Testament of Sherlock Holmes (Ubisoft) in early 2012. Now, I’m sure some of you are like, Sherlock Holmes, so what? They’re fun little puzzle games, and I’m a sucker for puzzle games. I like games that make me think and I really do kind of like Sherlock Holmes, though I’m more a fan of the gritty, drug addict Holmes (read original Holmes) than the prim and proper, upstanding Holmes (read Data of TNG).

Now we’re about to get really nerdy because Lego Harry Potter: Years 5-8 (Sony DADC Austria AG) comes out later this year too. I played through the first game and had an absolute blast. The Lego games are way too much fun and really funny. I expect this game to be just as much fun. The regular games after about 5 were such a disappointment. It’s nice to play a game based on the books and the movie that keeps the spirit of the game and is enjoyable. Don’t get me started on the game for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Pt. 1. Ugh.

Okay, super, fan-girly squee moment. Assasin’s Creed Revelations (Ubisoft), also November 15th (omgomgomgomg). When these games came out originally, I never really picked up on them because I thought they were hard and they didn’t look like much. Then I saw my boyfriend, Kevin, playing the second one and I thought, what the hell? It’s something to do. Holy hell are these games fun. You get to sneak around and assassinate people, steal stuff, and do puzzles. What’s a gal not to like? Not to mention that Ezio has a sexy voice. Hehe. Yes, I’m bad. Here’s a preview to salivate over.

Second, super, fan-girly squee moment. Mass Effect 3 (EA Games), due out March of 2012. Yeah, yeah, not technically fall, but I’ve been looking forward to this game for a while and, truthfully, it was supposed to come out in November, but I guess they didn’t want to compete with all the other drool worthy games out there. And, well, who doesn’t like a completed game? Anyone wanna talk about Duke Nukem Forever? Yeah, I didn’t think so.