June 2022 Goals

I was recently joking with some author friends about setting up Gantt charts to figure out our publishing schedules. (As a programmer, I hated Gantt charts, but that had more to do with managers assigning a fixed end date and using the chart to calculate the number of days available for each task. That’s the exact opposite of their purpose and is probably the top reason software release dates slip.)

Uh, I hadn’t really meant to rant about Gantt charts. Where was I? Oh yeah. Release dates! I set up the pre-order for All Gremlins Great & Small (June 30!), started calculating backward, and had to change some of my May goals.

I probably should set up a Gantt chart to keep my publishing schedule on track.

May Goals

• Add another 30k works to All Rocs (book 2). Ideally, I’d finish the book this month, but we’ll see how that goes… I think I came close to 30k. I’m about 5k from the end, but I wanted to go back through and make the book more coherent before writing the ending.
• Address the pacing problem in All Gremlins. Did this. I’m halfway through the final read-aloud pass, and the manuscript will go to the proofreader this Monday.
• Edit the Jackpot Drift short story. If I get it done in the next two weeks, it will go out with the newsletter. Nope. Didn’t do it.
• After the short story is done, update the website with a page for free short stories. Nope. Didn’t do this either.
• Stretch goal: write a bonus epilog for All Gremlins to convince people to sign up for my newsletter. Absolutely did not do this.

I’m still an easy grader. I’m giving myself an A-minus because I got a lot done, even if it wasn’t the stuff I said I was going to do. Can I plan better next month? We shall see.

June Goals

• Release All Gremlins on June 30th.
• Finish the full first draft of All Rocs.
• Continue getting weekly episodes of the space opera serial (Independent Flight) out on Kindle Vella.
• Outline the next Penelope Standing book.
• Write the bonus epilog for All Gremlins to convince people to sign up for my newsletter.
• Stretch goal: edit & load the ghost story on Kindle Vella. (The full draft is written, but I need to fix one character arc, so this may take more time than I have available.)

Obligatory Pet Photo