Weekly Goals 26-1-26

 I had both a productive and restful weekend this weekend, so that's good.  Feeling at least somewhat ready to face work this morning.  It's not going to be a fun week, I suspect, with all the "change proposal" meetings happening and people feeling uncertain about their jobs. I'll just keep my head down, and get on with my own work and try to be supportive if people need someone to talk to.

The weather is looking iffy again for some of the week, but I'm hoping to ride to work most days.  It will be a miracle if I actually get to do it five days out of five.

I've started clearing out my WDC portfolio and have a little more space.  I want to continue with this project, especially if I settle on an idea for a new book to work on.  Or even if I just keep writing flash fiction for a few more weeks while that novel idea germinates.  It's still pretty vague, but I'm thinking it will be set over one 24-hour period and it's a romance.  Think, Before Sunrise, but set behind the scenes at a low-rent kind of music festival or county fair.  I know who the girl is, but the boy's still a little out of focus. But I know that if I wait, he'll tell me who he is.

What are your goals this week?

Celebrate the Small Things 24-1-26

 

It's the end of the week, so what am I celebrating?

It's the weekend!

And yes, I know it was a short week with a holiday on Monday, but it's been super busy and I need a break.  I have quite a nice quiet weekend planned this week, so I'm looking forward to that.  Lots of writing stuff and maybe a movie.  The weather is pretty dreadful, so even though the garden needs some attention, it's going to have to wait.

After the flurry of rejections I received early in the week, there have been no more, which is good.  No more requests, either, which is less good, but I'll take whatever wins I can get.

The new book is continuing to get good feedback from my critique group.  It doesn't follow any of the rules of storytelling and novel structure, but somehow the characters are compelling enough to keep people reading despite the lack of an inciting incident in the right place and no real antagonist.

What are you celebrating this week?

Books I've Read: Day

This was another of the books I really enjoyed while I was on vacation.  I picked it up because I enjoyed The Hours which is by the same author and was interested to read something else by the same person.  I was also curious if the author might be interested in time as concept, considering the titles of both books...

And Day is about time, sort of, but mainly about family.  It's set across a day with sections called Morning, Afternoon and Evening.  The wrinkle?  The morning, afternoon and evening are in different years, so the book actually spans 2019, 2020 and 2021, following the same family.

In the morning of 2019, Isabel and her husband Dan are struggling with the fact they need to kick Isabel's younger brother out of their loft where he's been living while recovering from his most recent break-up.  Amid the morning chaos of getting kids off to school, we see the strain their marriage is under and the deep affection both of them have for Robbie which is making it harder to ask him to move even though they know their ten-year-old son needs the space to begin asserting his independence.  Robbie, who is unsatisfied with his life, has created an online persona much more adventurous and glamorous than himself and revels in posting and watching followers eat it up.

In the afternoon of 2020, the world is locked down and the family is stuck in the apartment.  Violet, the youngest child is terrified of the virus and berates anyone who leaves a window open, certain that's the way the virus will get in.  Nathan, the older son has now moved into Robbie's attic and uses his newfound privacy y to break the rules while distracted, his parents suffer through their fracturing marriage without really speaking to one another.  Robbie, who left the country just prior to the COVID outbreak, is trapped in a cabin in Iceland, still posting from the perspective of his glamorous alter-ego.

I won't go into detail of what happens in the evening of 2021, but it beautifully wraps up this family's story and shows how they've made it through this time of crisis and through an the other side.  There are glimmers of hope for their futures and a certainty that their resilience will allow them to move past this.

I really enjoyed this book.  I thought it might be fragmentary and frustrating in that it's episodic, but the three sections ft together so beautifully, following characters you can't help but feel affection for, even while you're frustrated by some of their actions.  The decisions made in one section echo through the next, showing us how things we do can ripple through our lives, across years and affect everything.

So, I'd recommend this one.  It's literary, but not a challenging read.  The characters are very real and flawed, frustrating you at every turn with their choices or inertia in making choices.

But don't just listen to me.  Here's the blurb:

As the world changes around them, a family weathers the storms of growing up, growing older, falling in and out of love, losing the things that are most precious—and learning to go on—from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Hours

April 5, 2019 : In a cozy brownstone in Brooklyn, the veneer of domestic bliss is beginning to crack. Dan and Isabel, troubled husband and wife, are both a little bit in love with Isabel’s younger brother, Robbie. Robbie, wayward soul of the family, who still lives in the attic loft; Robbie, who, trying to get over his most recent boyfriend, has created a glamorous avatar online; Robbie, who now has to move out of the house—and whose departure threatens to break the family apart. Meanwhile Nathan, age ten, is taking his first uncertain steps toward independence, while Violet, five, does her best not to notice the growing rift between her parents.

April 5, 2020: As the world goes into lockdown, the brownstone is feeling more like a prison. Violet is terrified of leaving the windows open, obsessed with keeping her family safe, while Nathan attempts to skirt her rules. Isabel and Dan communicate mostly in veiled jabs and frustrated sighs. And beloved Robbie is stranded in Iceland, alone in a mountain cabin with nothing but his thoughts—and his secret Instagram life—for company.

April 5, 2021: Emerging from the worst of the crisis, the family reckons with a new, very different reality—with what they’ve learned, what they’ve lost, and how they might go on.

From the brilliant mind of Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Cunningham, Day is a searing, exquisitely crafted meditation on love and loss and the struggles and limitations of family life—how to live together and apart.

Weekly Goals 19-1-26

 I have two main goals this week and I kind of hope to get through both of them today since it's a holiday.

Firstly, I've spent a lot of the weekend prepping my deck to be re-stained, so my goal for today is to stain it.  I may not have time to do two coats (I can't remember how long you need to leave them to dry between coats), but if I can get one on today, I can get the second on next weekend.

My second goal is to finish the beta read I'm doing for a friend in my critique group.  I've done a lot of it already - I probably only have 100 more pages to go.

Apart from that, I want to try and ride my bike to work every day this week, but it looks like the weather may not cooperate with that one.  I swear, this summer has been diabolical.  If the wind hasn't been howling, it's been wet and/or cold.  I mean, it's 13 degrees here this morning!  This is not the summer I signed on for.

And, that's about it for goals this week.  What are you trying to achieve?

Celebrate the Small Things 16-1-26

 

It's the end of the week, so what am I celebrating?

It's a long weekend this weekend.  And I've take Friday off as well, so I have four days off.  That's something to celebrate!  Even if I have a big home-maintenance project I need to get done over that long weekend.  Fingers crossed the weather improves because it's an outside project - I need to get my deck prepped for staining, and then hopefully, stained.  The house is being painted in late February,  so I wanted to do the deck before than so it won't matter so much if I get a little deck stain on the house like I did the last time I stained the deck.

I've had a few readers finish the new book (Street Smarts although I need to find a better title) and they've all been super positive about it which is great because I really wasn't 100% sure the structure or the story worked.  But, apparently it does.  I'm going to wait for more feedback before diving back into revisions because I'd rather have all the feedback on hand before I make changes.  I have a few things I want to change, but they're not major.

Got another request for A Stranger to Kindness too, which makes me happy.  

And I finally got a date for the surgery I've been waiting for.  It's really soon - Feb 18 - but that gives me plenty of time to recover before the season at work starts and I have to travel and stuff.  I will probably miss some stuff in the Arts Festival I have tickets for, but that's a fairly small price to pay.

What are you celebrating this week?

Books I've loved: Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore

 

This was one of the books I picked up to read on my holiday, a kind of random selection off the library shelf because I liked the title.  And it ended up being my favorite read of the vacation!

Set in San Francisco,  the book is about Clay, a young man still trying to find himself after college.  He's had a brief moment of glory as the wunderkind behind a viral marketing campaign, but since then, he's failed to find the career he feels he deserves.  Broke and desperate, he takes a job as a night clerk at Mr. Penumbra's 24 hour bookstore, working from 10pm until 6am.

The bookstore is odd, with tall shelves that can only be accessed by ladders.  There are only a handful of books in it that anyone has actually heard of, the bulk of the stock being obscure volumes that customers "check out" and return based on some archaic system only Mr. Penumbra understands. Without much else to occupy his mind or his time, Clay begins an analysis of the customer behavior, thinking he may uncover whatever the strange store is a front for.

What he discovers is far stranger, and when he brings his findings to his eccentric boss, things take a turn toward the bizarre.  Clay finds himself on his way to New York and the headquarters of an ancient institution where people engage in a centuries-old quest for immortality.

Mixing conspiracy theories, ancient texts, font analysis, big-tech, romance and more, this book was a total blast from start to finish.  The characters are unusual, yet for the most part, endearing and I found myself ripping through the book in a single afternoon, desperate to discover the secret to eternal life alongside the characters.

I won't reveal the ending or much else because it would ruin the joy of reading the book.  Just know that this is a fun romp with a lot f surprising twists and turns.

Definitely recommend.

But don't just listen to me.  Here's the blurb:

Global conspiracy, complex code-breaking, high-tech data visualization, young love, the secret to eternal life. Mostly in a hole-in-the-wall San Francisco bookstore.

Clay Jannon tells how serendipity, sheer curiosity, and the ability to climb a ladder like a monkey has sent him from Web Drone to night shift at Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore. After just a few days on the job, Clay realizes just how curious this store is.

A few customers come in repeatedly without buying anything. Instead they “check out” obscure volumes from strange corners of the store. All runs according to some elaborate, long-standing arrangement with the gnomic Mr. Penumbra. The store must be a front for something larger, Clay concludes.

He embarks on a complex analysis of the customers’ behavior and ropes in friends to help. Once they bring their findings to Mr. Penumbra, it turns out the secrets extend far outside the walls of the bookstore. A quest to New York City dips in a world conspiracy for eternal life. The current of romance pulls Clay onward.

Dear Me 2026

 Last week I looked at how I did with my 2025 goals, so this week, it's time to write myself a letter outlining the things I hope to achieve in 2026.  So, here goes.

Dear Me,

I did a lot of writing in 2025.  Far more than I expected to.  I wrote a couple hundred pieces of flash fiction (one most days) and also started and completed a new novel.  Even after a few weeks' break, I'm feeling creatively limber and ready to keep writing in 2026.  I haven't quite got back into the swing of the daily flash fiction yet, but I hope to manage that at least five days a week.  It's such a good way to keep that writing muscle in shape when I'm not actively working on a project.  It also really stretches me because I use the Writers' Cramp prompts for these flash fiction pieces and they're often not the kinds of thing I'd usually explore on my own. 

My portfolio on WDC is too full for me to add any more stories, so I've been deleting old stuff to make way for new stuff, but a lot of those stories exist only on the site, so I'm planning to spend a day or two downloading all the old stories into a laptop folder so I can work on them and maybe submit the better ones to publications.  Most of my flash fiction was written in 30 minutes or less, so it needs some tidying up, and often the endings are somewhat rushed because I realize I'm running out of words and need to finish.  But a few of them are really quite good and I should do something more with them.

I finished the novel I'm tentatively calling Street Smarts late last year.  It didn't exactly turn out the way I expected it to and I'm not 100% sure it works the way I've written it.  It's out with my critique group at the moment and so far they've been, maybe not enjoying it because it's not actually that enjoyable, but appreciating it.  I mean, calling it not enjoyable is probably not the right way of talking about it, but the subject matter is tough.  One of my crit group couldn't take it and has only read the last section. I know I will need to do some more work on this one, but I'm going to need that feedback before I can move forward.  I think I may also need to do some thinking about whether I want to try and sell this as YA or not because it's even grittier and darker than my usual stuff.  And my work is always gritty and dark...

I will continue querying A Stranger to Kindness even though it is beginning to feel a little futile.  I just feel so strongly about this story and these characters. I re-read the book over the holidays and it is definitely the best book I've written.  Yeah, I'm probably a little biased, but I really enjoyed reading it as a reader, not as an author, and I think there are other people out there who will enjoy it too.  I understand that it's a tough sell with a 15-year-old boy narrator and no real romantic subplot to speak of, but I know there are readers out there who would welcome a story about relationships without them being romantic.  So, I'll dig my heels into those query trenches and hope for a few more full manuscript requests.  I thought having previously had an agent was supposed to make it easier to find a new one, but that does not seem to be the case at all.

Weirdly, I don't have any new novel ideas clamoring to be told right now.  There are a couple of things brewing at the back of my brain, but they're not ready to be written yet.  So, I'll wait.  I know a new idea will come.  They always do.  Usually at a time I'm not really in a position to be able to write them.

Outside of writing, I'm still teaching at the gym so keeping fit is a must.  While the weather is good I plan to cycle to work every day too.  It's been so windy here the last few months it's been  kind of a challenge, and the wind is even more crazy today.

I still have a lot to learn at my new job and it's going to be a very busy year.  My goal is to try and get everything done at least two weeks before any deadline so I have time and space to check things properly before they get put in place.  There are so many elements to the system we use, it's easy to think things are working as planned only to discover something wrong a little way down the track.  And sometimes they're not easy to fix...

My word of the year is "yes" and my goal is to say yes to everything unless there's a really compelling reason to say no. And I mean, a really good reason.  Not just because going home and curling up on the couch feels like a nice idea.

I think I've finally broken my lifetime nail biting habit, so my goal this year is to keep them looking good.  I'm not great at filing them so they keep a consistent shape, so I need to work on that.  I think they'll be a lot less tempting to bite f they're all nicely smooth and even.

And finally, I plan to keep going to the movies and supporting the cinema business.  Streaming has really messed with the business and if we're going to keep having the opportunity to go to movies, we need to support cinemas by going.  After spending the bulk of my career working in movie theaters, this is something I feel very strongly about.  I do watch movies on streaming platforms, but the experience is not the same as sitting in the dark with a bunch of strangers and sharing something.  I'd hate to see that experience disappear.

I think that's all my goals for now.  What do you hope to do in 2026?

Celebrate the Small Things 9-1-26

 

It's the end of the week, so what am I celebrating?

I guess I can't really say "the weekend" when I've only been back at work for three days in 2026...  But you know what?  Those first days back after a break are always the toughest, so I am celebrating the weekend. So there!

I had a good break.  It rained a lot while I was at the beach, which was a bit annoying.  On the plus side, I did manage to read 11 books, so it wasn't all bad.  And because it was just me and my parents, it was relaxing. 

I have a bunch of house-related things to do over the next few weeks.  It's being painted at the end of February and before that, I want to re-stain my deck which means scrubbing it, waterblasting it and scrubbing it again before I put the stain on.  So, I figure that's at least a couple of weekends taken up, given it will need to dry in between.  Pray for good weather...

And that's about it for celebrating this week.  I'm not quite back into the swing things yet, so I'm a little all over the place.

What are you celebrating this week?

IWSG - January '26

It's the first Wednesday of the month (and of 2026), so it's time for the Insecure Writers' Support Group.

Our lovely hosts for the January 7 posting of the IWSG are Shannon Lawrence, Olga Godim, Jean Davis, and Jacqui Murray.

This month's question has me kind of stymied...

Is there anything in your writing plans for 2026 that you are going to do that you couldn't get done in 2025?

You see, I haven't made any real writing plans for 2026 yet.  For the first time in years, I don't have a new book clamoring to be written.  And I don't want to force it.  I know something will come to me eventually.  And in the meantime, I have edits to do on the book I wrote last year, and I'm still querying one I finished at the end of 2024.  So, I won't be bored. 

The one thing I'd like to continue in 2026 is writing flash fiction every day.  I've had a wee break over the holidays, so this week I plan to get back to writing one each day if I can.

But that's not answering the question...  I did start an MG novel last year that I only got a few chapters into, so maybe, while I wait for a real novel idea to appear, I'll tinker with that and maybe get it finished.  

Are there things you have hanging over you from 2025 that you're hoping to get to in the New Year

Dear Me 2026 (part 1)

Every year I write myself a letter outlining my goals for the year.  I try to do a check in on how I'm tracking mid-way through and again at the end of the year.  So, before I get started on goals for 2026, let's see how I did with my 2025 goals.  My comments are in purple...

Dear Me,

I did pretty well with 2024's goals, so here's to doing as well in 2025.

Despite having got absolutely no traction so far in querying Guide Us, I will keep persevering with it.  I know this is a good book and I'm really weirded out that it hasn't had any requests.  The last book I queried was the same, but at least with that one, I knew there was something in it that might prove difficult for agents and/or publishers even if I didn't advertise it in the query.  With Guide Us, I don't think there's anything too controversial in there... I guess religion could be controversial though.  Especially questioning it.

I didn't really do this.  I did a little half-hearted querying at the beginning of the year, then set this one aside.  I've re-read it recently, and I still think it's good, so maybe I'll do something with it this year.

I have a book - Standing Too Close -  coming out sometime later in the year; I'm still waiting for a date for that.  Hopefully I'll find out soon because I'd like to be able to start things rolling as far as publicity goes as soon as possible.  I'm also waiting on edits for that one and would like to get through those before I dive into revisions and editing on A Stranger to Kindness.  They're both boy narrator books but the voices are very, very different.

Well, Standing Too Close came out in August and has received some great reviews.  I haven't had a royalty statement yet, so no clue how it's selling, but the fact Amazon has it listed under some really weird meta-data probably isn't helping it get sales.  My publisher managed to get the non-fiction tag taken off it, but it's still listed as sci-fi and fantasy which it very, very much isn't.  I imagine Amazon is outsourcing these kinds of thing to AI and this just proves how unintelligent AI really is.

And talking about A Stranger to Kindness, the plan for that is to get it revised and ready to query before the end of the year.  I feel like that's going to be a tough one because I love this book so much and if it winds up getting the same response as Guide Us, it's going to be somewhat devastating.  I need to mentally prepare for that.

I did this.  I've been querying for about six months and have racked up an impressive number of rejections.  I recently re-read this one too, to see if maybe I was wrong about it being good, but it still wrecked me the same way it did when I wrote it.  So I'll keep persevering until there is no one left to query.  I have had a couple of requests, so fingers crossed one of those agents will love my boys as much as I do.

Luckily, by the second half of the year my work will have ramped right up so I will probably be far too busy to get too upset.  Here's hoping anyway...

I have been busy. I actually ended up changing jobs midway through the year, just at the time my old job would have started getting insane.  So, I wound up stepping into a new role with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra ten days before they went on sale with the 2026 season.  To say I've been too busy to get upset about rejections is kind of an understatement...

And as far as non-writing goals go, I suppose they're much the same as they have been for the last few years.  To keep exercising, to keep reading as much as possible and to see films at the cinema least every two weeks.

I did this.  Mostly.

The exercising should be easy enough since I'm now an instructor at the gym and I'm hoping to pick up a couple more regular classes this year.  I've been teaching only 30 minute spin classes, but I'm starting to learn the hour-long ones now too, so will probably pick up some of those classes in the next little while.

I'm still teaching.  I have two regular classes and most weeks I have picked up at least one more, either an 30 minute or a one-hour.  I've even taught at a different gym a couple of times as a reliever.

I've lowered my reading target for 2025 to 110 books since I've failed to meet my goal the last two years running.  I've been reading more adult books than YA recently and they tend to be both longer and more complex than my usual YA reads, so they take me longer to get through.  Here's hoping the large number of books I got through during my holiday last week - the weather was not great so there was a lot of time to read - kickstarts things well.

I didn't hit my reading goal this year.  I only managed 83 books.  I have done a lot more writing in 2025, which I think cut down on my reading time, but also I read a lot more adult books again.  The YA section of the library doesn't seem to be getting much love in the form of new books, and I've read pretty much everything there.

There are a lot of films opening the next few weeks that I want to see, so I should be able to keep up my film-going at least in the early part of the year.  Things might get a little more challenging once the Award Season movies dry up, but by then the Film Society should have started up again.

I managed this pretty well.  I think I only missed one or two Film Society films in the whole year - because I'd already seen them enough I didn't feel like I needed a re-visit - and I went to something at a cinema almost every week.

I finally managed to (sort of) break my nail biting habit in 2024, so I will endeavor to keep my nails nice in 2025 too.  Preferably without having to pay for expensive manicures every few weeks.  I do like having my nails done properly, but it does become expensive.

I have managed to keep this up.  I have also paid to have my nails done more often than I really wanted to, but in the name of keeping them nice, I feel like it's not too high a price to pay.  Just something I can't really afford.

What are your goals for the New Year?