2016 was something of a turnaround year for me writing wise. After a 3 year break I finally released not one but two new books (Lucky Shot and The Colony) Unfortunately the blog suffered from a lack of attention as I focused my writing time on these endeavours, but this was a conscious decision. My plan is to continue this momentum into 2017 and release at least 2-3 more books. I have a couple of stories in various stages of completion to help me achieve this goal. I’m also going to change up my writing habits this year. Instead of taking large breaks between projects and then writing huge chunks in a short space of time, this year I’m trying to be more consistent, writing small chunks every day. Some of these will appear on the blog, some will make their way to other venues and others will chip away at progress in my longer works.
Writing isn’t my only area of focus for 2017. One other thing that’s been suffering lately is my reading time. Other distractions like Netflix and Xbox have slowly eaten into this time, to the point where I’m not reading consistently anymore. I didn’t realize how bad this had become until I realized I’d only got through a handful of books in 2016. I’m therefore going to dedicate time in my week to sitting down and enjoying a good book.
That got me thinking, what should I be reading? I love to work with other indie authors and learn from them, why don’t I focus on Indie books for 2017? I’m setting a target of 25 indie books to read this year. Not only that, i know how important sales, reviews and ratings are when you’re in indie author, so I’ll be buying and reviewing every book I read (No freebies unless the book is free for everyone). Do you know a good indie book I should be checking out (including your own)? Let me know about it in the comments below.
I’m going to kick things off with the sci-fi novel Grind Spark, by Tamara Rogers. I’ve already started it and am loving it so far! Expect a review in the next week or so.