did I meet 2017’s writing goals?

Now that 2018 is almost upon us, it’s time to look back and see if I met my writing goals from 2017!

Let’s look at my writing goals for 2017 one-by-one:

1.) Finish the FROSTBORN series.

Success! The FROSTBORN series concluded in May with FROSTBORN: THE SHADOW PRISON, which was my longest (and best-reviewed) book of 2017.

2.) Start the GHOST NIGHT series.

Success! GHOST IN THE RING came out in June, and GHOST IN THE GLASS in December. Both sold really well.

3.) Start a new epic fantasy series once FROSTBORN is done.

Success! I started the SEVENFOLD SWORD series, and published SEVENFOLD SWORD: CHAMPION, SEVENFOLD SWORD: SWORDBEARER. and SEVENFOLD SWORD: WARLORD.

4.) Publish three new CLOAK GAMES books.

Success! I published CLOAK GAMES: TRUTH CHAIN, CLOAK GAMES: TOMB HOWL, and CLOAK GAMES: HAMMER BREAK.

5.) Produce more print books.

Success! In 2016 37 of my books were available in paperback, but as of right now 63 of them are available in paperback. Given that I have 73 published novels, that’s a good ratio.

6.) Publish one new book every month.

I almost did this. I published something new every month except April, since I spent most of March and all of April writing FROSTBORN: THE SHADOW PRISON.

I don’t think I will repeat this goal for 2018. It would be nice to have a new book come out every month, but if anything goes wrong in the process of or anything unexpected comes up in Real Life, then the schedule is shot. So instead of “every month”, a more realistic goal is “as often as feasible.”

7.) Secret Goal: publish three books in one month.

Not only a success, a runaway success! This was for my SILENT ORDER science fiction series. The original plan was to write a trilogy of them. Instead, I wound up writing five, and I published the first one in September and the remaining four in October.

And then I wrote one more, for a total of six!

So it looks like it was a successful year, writing-wise. In a couple of days I’ll lay out my writing goals for 2018.

-JM