Burning In the New Year

It's the end of the year and time for the obligatory end of the year retrospective. Everyone's doing it.

2008 has been an eventful year for this zeppelin. I finished my first novel and started - in earnest - my second. I set a writing goal for myself and, so far, I've kept it more often than not. I got my first ever freelance writing contract - my first ever paid writing - and I delivered, on time, material that impressed my boss... and then I got a second contract. I started a blog (twice, even) - a successful blog with real live readers (in New Zealand! Crazy!) - and I haven't dropped it yet, and I won't, and in this blog I've posted about all sorts of things. I participated in National Novel Writing Month... and lost. But I tried, and that's a big thing.

What will the new year hold? Well, you never know for sure, but here are a few ideas that tickle me:

• I will grow the Burning Zeppelin Experience. I want more readers, I want an active readership who comment and post links to things they like and to their own blogs. To achieve this, I will continue linking aggressively and pimping myself out on the blogs and podcasts that I consume. I will also finally get those business cards printed and start passing them out at local sci-fi/fantasy/rpg conventions.
• I will also transform the Burning Zeppelin Experience. In the coming year, I want to transfer the Burning Zeppelin Experience from a blogger blog (cool, flexible, and free, but limited and less professional) to a Wordpress-powered blog, with my own domain name, on my hosted web space.
• I will do even better with my writing goals: finish my second novel, finish my third (NaNoWriMo) novel, edit my first novel, and write (and finish!) more short stories. Also, I will finish at least a first draft of one of my several roleplaying games (not that that's ever going to get published, but a dude can dream).
  
• I will aggressively pursue publication. I will get my third freelance contract (and my fourth, and my fifth, and my sixth...), I will send short stories to magazines, and when A Knight of the Land is finished, I will send it to agents.

Are these New Year's resolutions? Nope. Resolutions are lame. They never happen. This? This is an action plan, baby.

Catch you in 2009.