I hope everyone had another wonderful holiday! Among my very generous haul this year was a silly yet cool present to myself: a plasma lighter that just happens to resemble the one my heroine Dame Jessamine uses in the Sword and Starship series for both cigarillos and snooping. Unlike her, I don’t regularly have need of portable fire, but this will make candle-lighting easier. I tend to burn through a good number of those during winter, hoping to make my house a little cozier.

Writing Updates:

Even though I feel like I’m treading through molasses sometimes, I really am making progress: up to about 45K words in 10 chapters. That’s 1/2 of Blood’s Force or 1/3 of Harbingers! If I keep progressing at this rate, I should have around 90K/20ish chapters by the end of April. I’d like for Book 3 to be around the same size as the first two books, certainly no longer.

Will I be done by that point? No idea. I’ve learned that when outlining, I tend to overestimate how much I can do. What I think I can cram into 1 book really needs more like 2-3 to be told properly. Oh well, is anyone complaining about more books?

Current Goals:

Learning Latin. Still at it, and still pleasantly surprised at how helpful it’s been. I’m on Chapter 17 of my 40-chapter intro book, and I feel perfectly motivated to push through to completion.

Refreshing German. I started listening to “Top-Thema” lessons over at Deutsche Welle, and attempting the quizzes afterward. My listening comprehension has always been weak, but I feel like it’s already improved in the short amount of time I’ve been doing this.

Learning Italian. Keeping this on the back-burner, picking up words and phrases that interest me, but otherwise not making a big push to acquire. I can cheat and guess a lot from Latin. ;)

Updating my blog’s appearance. WordPress finally allows you to draft theme and layout changes—thus you don’t have to make them live, hate them, try to revert back, fail, cry, etc. So this is potentially something to look into, although I don’t know how seriously at this point.

Revamping my routine and acquiring new habits. Can we talk about how impossible it is to send yourself outside in single-digit weather? With the recent cold snap, I’ve had trouble fulfilling my “walk outside every day” goal. It helps when I have an errand to run. When I don’t? Um, I think I’d rather just curl up on the couch with my blanket and my cat, thank you!

Plan/Schedule trip to Rome in 2018. Time to get serious about figuring out what to do when! I’d like to start buying tickets for tours and whatnot. (Holy crap.)

Later Goals:
Ramp up selling/promotion (after Book 3 is done, possibly later)

That’s all, folks! Hope your new year is amazing, and I’ll see you here next month!