Goals for 2020

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. As with the past couple years, I have a few different areas to talk about when it comes to plans and goals. Having this post helps give me a general direction for myself for the year ahead, and gives me something to reference for each monthly wrap up post so let’s just go ahead and get started.

Reading

Obviously my first goal is reading. Last year I started my Goodreads Reading Challenge at 75 books. I increased that goal like 4 times through the year, and ended up reading 220 books, which is impressive and far more than I’ve read since long before the days of Goodreads. So I’m not going to set my goal as low as I have in past years. I’m just going to start my goal at 125 and see what happens.

Obviously I’m still keeping myself on a sort of book budget for the foreseeable future, but I think it’s a doable restriction and I’ll still have decent hauls…plus lots of access to my local library…and I have a huge stack of owned unread books, so there’s plenty to do.

As a bonus reading goal, I’d like to get my NetGalley review ratio up to at least 80% this year. I’ve let it slack over the past couple years and 2020 seems like a good year to focus on my gifted copies, especially considering my book buying restrictions.

Oh, and I definitely still want to do more reading challenges and readathons. So expect me to participate in every session of Dewey’s 24 Hour Readathon, and maybe some other random ones throughout the year. I will absolutely still be hosting Middle Grade March again this year, so that’s something to look forward to. Plus, I have decided that I had a blast with my impromptu #JolabokaflodReadathon on Christmas Eve, so I’m going to bring it back in 2020. Prepare yourself for an evening of reading and enjoying chocolate. It’ll be a fun time.

Blogging

2019 was a pretty great year of blogging for me, and I’m hoping to make 2020 even better. For most of 2019 I was posting every single day, and honestly I’m amazed that I was able to keep up with that schedule as long as I did. Honestly I read enough to generate that amount of content, so if I can keep up with that again in 2020 then I’m sincerely hoping too.

For sure we can expect that I’ll be back with a few of the blog series here. Sundays will be my Weekend Writer posts, Mondays will be Manga Monday reviews, Wednesday will be my Weekly Wrap-Up, and Fridays will alternate between Recommendations and Discussion posts. Other than that I’ll be uploading book reviews when I have them on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, but my priority at the beginning of the year is definitely my novel writing.

I think I’m going to do a slight upgrade to the purchase links I include in my review posts though, adding in IndieBound as well as my current bookstore options. Oh, and I’m also thinking of adding the book details section from my manga reviews to all book reviews, so that I can include the book’s publisher and other relevant details into my reviews.

Writing

This is going to be one of my main focuses in the early part of the year. Colorworld Books has said that they want to publish my books. That can only happen if I finish writing and editing books. So I’ll be writing hard-core on my D&D inspired contemporary romance for the first few months of the year, and then I’ll be looking for some content readers and beta readers. Let me know if you’re interested.

If I can finish that book, then I have a few others I’d like to get back to and finish finally, but I need to give myself a list of writing priorities, and this romance story is one I really want to write, even though I’m so nervous about my ability to tell the story well. So I’m going to try and through my nerves and anxieties aside and just give myself the permission to just write the book, even if I write it poorly. I can make it better in edits.

I am also definitely bringing back my Weekend Writer posts on the blog, because I really enjoyed doing them–even if they were a lot of work. I found them to be quite helpful and I hope they help some of you as well.

Conventions

Damian and I are both hoping that this section will get a little more flushed out throughout the year, but for right now I can absolutely say that there are a few conventions we already have on our calendar. We might get to add more depending on if our friends at Colorworld Books need a couple extra hands at conventions somewhat near us, so we’ll see what happens.

Ohayocon: Jan 10-12 in Columbus, OH

GenCon: July 30-Aug 2 in Indianapolis, IN

Cincinnati Comic Expo: September 11-13 in Cincinnati, OH

I’m also going to include our honeymoon in this area, and that will be Oct 11-17 at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter.

Another convention-like event is the Ohio Renaissance Festival which is Saturdays and Sundays from pretty much Labor Day Weekend to around Halloween Weekend, so we’ll probably go there once or twice in 2020.

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Okay, so that is all from me for today, but I’ll be back soon with more bookish content.