Goals for 2019

Hey all, Dani here.

Since we are now in the early days of the year, I suppose it is time to make some resolutions. Though I’d rather call them goals, because honestly, resolutions are things that most of us give up on a couple weeks into the year, and I’d rather not give up on these tasks. I have a few different areas to talk about when it comes to plans and goals, so let’s just go ahead and get started.

Reading

First up is my reading goals for the year. I’m going to set my Goodreads Reading Challenge at 75 books to start with. I technically read 146 books in 2018, so number wise, my goal may seem to be rather low. But it will make sense when I start talking about my next reading goal.

I’ve realized that I have a lot of books in my library that are Big Books. I mean, books that are around 500 pages or more. And I’d like to reduce that list down a bit, which means that I want to read as many of them as possible. I’ll list off some of these longer tomes, just to give an idea of my goals. Now, when it comes to some of these epic fantasy series, I know I won’t be able to finish the whole set, but we’ll see how it goes.

The Last Magician and The Devil’s Thief by Lisa Maxwell

Obsidio by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff

Strange the Dreamer and Muse of Nightmares by Laini Taylor

European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman by Theodora Goss

City of Lies by Sam Hawke

Voyager by Diana Gabaldon

The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan (and completed by Brandon Sanderson)

The Stormlight Archive series by Brandon Sanderson

The Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind

The Lightbringer Saga by Brent Weeks

The Green Rider series by Kristen Britain

Another reading goal I have for 2019 is to participate in more 24 hour readathons, because I love them, and I find them to be great for increasing my books read count. So you can expect to at the very least see me participating in every session of Dewey’s 24 Hour Readathon. But I hope to find other ones to participate in as well.

Blogging

Obviously, 2018 was a pretty good year for me when it comes to blogging. I managed to keep up somewhat regular post schedule, and I reached 500 followers, which was amazing. So I’d like to keep writing up my review posts, and building up my blog some more. I’d also like to find the time to keep up with more of everyone else’s blogs, because I miss doing that.

Now, there is one big change that I will be making to my Manga Review posts. I realized that with my manga posts, I don’t actually mention the author in the title, which I feel bad about, but more than that, I don’t mention the artist anywhere. Honestly, I think that is a big problem on my part, and I will be fixing that in 2019. So for manga and also for graphic novels, I will list the author, artist, colorist, letterer, etc. just below the cover image.

I’d also like to find some more fun book tags to do. Oh, and I’d like to bring back my Recommendations series of posts, not just for books, but also for games of all kinds. Plus, I would maybe like to try and write up a few discussion posts. So we’ll see if that actually happens.

Writing

This is a big section for me to focus on for 2019. There is a book I have been wanting to write for a year and a half now, and I’ve only managed to write down some rough notes plus a few hundred words. I’ve actually had a conversation with a few ladies in Calendar Girls, and they have agreed to beta read for me. Of course, in order to have that happen, I need to finish writing it.

So that is a huge goal I have for 2019. I’d like to get the rough draft of my nerdy romance novel finished in the first quarter of the year, so I can run it through a few editing passes, and send it off to Colorworld Books. Perhaps I can have a book release towards the end of this year, or possibly next year.

Seriously, if any of you would like to pester me in the comments or on my Twitter, I’d appreciate the constant reminders that I need to get this book written.

Conventions

Lastly, let’s talk about conventions. I don’t know if we’re going to be able to do a full Gen Con again this year, but we should at least be able to go for a day or two. Once again, the gaming convention will take place the weekend of my birthday.

Then there’s the Cincinnati Comic Expo towards the end of September. My fiance and I plan to team up with Colorworld Books and help them with running their booth. So that should be a fun time. I love being able to go to conventions and spend a lot of time with other wonderfully geeky people talking about books, TV, movies, comics, and games. It’s just always a fun time.

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All right, well I do believe that is all for today. What goals do you have for 2019? Let’s help each other work on those goals, okay? I’ll be back soon with more bookish content.