I have finished revisions on the first part (of five) of my Middle Grade supernatural horror novel, Something’s Wrong with Sissy. I’ve pasted the text below. I’m happy with it overall. If you like it, I’d love to hear from you with a comment.

Part One: Summer

It was this time last summer that Sissy stopped talking. I remember it clearly. We were in the backyard, near the woods. Midsummer, so it was really hot. She turned to me, face shining with sweat. She glanced at the treeline and grinned. I could see the mischief in her eyes.

“C’mon, Mags! Find me!”

Those are the last words she ever said.

She took off, clearing the lawn in no time. She had always been a fast runner. Before I could say anything, she had disappeared beyond the oaks and maples. I groaned as I got to my feet. I was tired already from the heat and really didn’t feel like moving.

“Come back, Sissy!” I yelled. “I don’t want to play!”

No response. I called out again. Nothing.

I stomped forward, slowly building up the energy for something faster than a crawl. As I reached the treeline, I shouted again.

“Sissy! I’m not playing!”

She didn’t respond. I figured she didn’t want to give away her position. She was a champ at hide and seek. It always took me forever to find her on the best of days. I was always a little annoyed by the time I found her crouched inside a box in the attic or stuffed in the lazy susan (after she had stashed the pots and pans inside the oven) or, one time, hanging from the top branch of the tree by our bedroom window.

Sissy had always been small. She was born that way. I was the big twin, that’s what people called me. Sissy was the little one. The sick one. The frail one. “Frail” was what Gramma Mullins always called her. Frail little Sissy.

But she wasn’t frail. She was strong. And fast. “A natural athlete,” our father said.

As I walked through the woods, I kept an eye up toward the sky. I was looking for a hint of her green shirt or white shorts or bright blue shoes–something to give away her position. On the ground, I gently kicked at any large piles of upturned earth or fallen acorns. She had never hid in the dirt, but I bet she could dig like a dog and make herself a spot in no time flat.

I called out again. Then again.

Nothing.

“Look, Sissy,” I yelled at the trees. “I’m seriously not playing this stupid game right now. It’s hot and I am going inside. And if you don’t come with me then I’m going to–”

I struggled to think of something appropriately wicked.

“–I’m going to throw all your books in the trash. After I burn them. I mean it!”

I screamed the last part so loud, it made my throat hurt.

Still no answer.

I was so angry by that point, I almost didn’t hear the thud.

All my anger sank to my feet and suddenly I felt scared.

“Sissy?” I called out. “Sissy, are you okay?”

I ran toward the sound, almost snagging my shoe on a tangle of branches. Some twigs stuck to my laces and I kicked them off as I ran. I spotted something white in the distance. My brain tried to process what I was seeing in the confusion of color.

White. White shorts. Green. Green shirt.

Blue.

Blue shoes.

Sissy.

I ran.

Roots scraped at my ankles, twigs crunched under my feet, leaves gathered into darkness above me. Every step seemed like a mile. I couldn’t run fast enough. Finally, I reached her. Finally, I saw her.

My sister, slumped against the rough trunk of a graying tree.

She looked like a broken bird. Arms bent at her side like dead wings. Her head at a hard angle, face turned away.

I stopped, unsure of what to do. Something inside me pushed me forward, my feet suddenly stones. My hands shook. My thoughts were nothing but a blur.
When I got close enough, I dropped to my knees beside her.

My mom always said never to move anybody who was hurt because you could make their injury even worse. While that warning was in my head, I couldn’t resist rolling her over. She was breathing, which was good. But her face. Her face was pale. Blood trickled from her nose in thin red rivers. Tears lined her eyes. A stream of saltwater trickled down her cheek and pooled inside her left ear. She stared at the sky, eyes wide, catching the beams of light breaking through the leafy cover of the woods.

I snapped my fingers in front of her face. She didn’t respond. No blink, no sound.

Nothing.

I didn’t want to leave her but I had to. I cemented her location in my mind. I memorized the path I took out as I ran back home to get our parents.
Click to Read More

So I gave up writing.

It wasn’t intentional. It honestly just happened. A confluence of rejection, exhaustion, and anxiety wore me down and I stopped writing.

Outside of the day job, that is.

Time passed. Writing became something I didn’t do. I didn’t even think about it.

It was freeing. I stopped worrying about a lot of things and allowed myself to be okay with where I was in my career, in my life.

Then things started nagging at me. Unconsciously. I started to feel that anxiety when walking through a book store. I felt an aversion to reading. I got The Guilt over not having an agent and not having some big publishing contract. The tells.

The desire to write showed up soon after.

I dreaded things going back to how they had been. Back to being stuck in this constant cycle of unfulfilled ambition and unending self-defeat.

Then something else happened. I broke through a barrier, pierced some emotional membrane. I felt the need to write, the drive to create, but all those other anxieties melted away. I had the desire to go and make—and that was it. Nothing weighing me down, making me feel less-than. I fell back in love with both writing and reading without all this other baggage.

I wasn’t used to that. Depression, fear, anger had always been part of the package. Without those feelings, that creative fever I felt wasn’t a burden. It was exciting.

Admittedly, that made me nervous. I waited for the other shoe to drop and it didn’t.

Certain I wouldn’t be ambushed, I wandered into the writing fields again. I dusted off an old story of mine and started revising it. Free and clear and without. Without all those other, horrible things.

Which leads us to now and the name of this blog post. The story I’m revising, the story I’m finishing, is a Middle Grade horror novel called Something’s Wrong with Sissy. It’s a dark fable about a young girl named Margaret whose twin comes down with a strange affliction that only she can solve—or at least try to.

It’s about 20-25% of the way done now. I’ve posted some bits of it on my Twitter but will post longer excerpts here as I’m comfortable.

It appears I’m back writing. And for the first time in a while, I’m happy about that.

Stay tuned.

I think I’m starting to understand the concept of putting down roots. Staying in a place for a while. Staying at a job, a company for a long time. It’s…weird for me.

I never felt a connection to my hometown. And I always dreamt of having what is a rather impractical career.

When I was younger, I bounced around a variety of jobs that I hoped were never gonna turn into my career. So leaving when things got hard or tiring often felt like my best option. I didn’t want to work at those jobs forever so why put up when things weren’t great?

When my wife and I moved closer to Cleveland for her job, it was no big deal for me. The move meant closer proximity to cool things and I could continue to work on being a writer as I went from job to job.

Moving to Madison was harder–because of proximity to family–but it was a shot at working on something I truly love so we took it.

My need to move forward in my career outweighed pretty much every other factor.

And Madison is a great town. It’s my favorite town out of all the places I’ve lived. (London is my favorite town I’ve ever visited.)

Years later, I left that job for another job in the same area. And then that shop closed down. And I had no other opportunities.

This is the time when I launched a new edition of Little Fears and kicked off Operation: Awesome which were my attempts to hone my abilities and get practical, real product out there.

This led to some very welcome freelance gigs but it meant I was in constant pitching, constant working. I did anything and everything not just to scrape together taco money but to work my craft.

I wrote numerous bits and pieces for tabletop games (some of which paid, some of which got published, something that did both, some that did neither) and started doing article writing for AdventureGamers.com.

Once a year, I’d land a whale: a multi-month video game gig that helped us get through the leaner periods.

I was in panic mode this whole time. Every offer was short-term and I needed to find real stable full-time work. So I could catch my breath if nothing else.

I spent many years chasing a full-time opportunity. Any full-time opportunity. None of the work I got lasted all that long so I needed to be constantly looking for the next gig.

2012 is when everything changed. When I got an amazing offer–but had to walk away. When I won second prize at two different studios.

And then I landed the job at Volition.

But now, five years later, I am still always looking over my shoulder for the next thing. When things get too hard, my instinct is to look for another job.

I’ve developed a lot of bad habits–some necessary, some not–and they’re hard to shake.

All of this has prevented me from being comfortable putting down roots.

Why should I when I’m just gonna bounce, right?

But the truth is I’m in my chosen career, doing a job I love on amazingly “me” projects, working with amazing people–many of whom have become good friends. But I’ve never shaken off this perpetual fight or flight sensation.

It’s become something that nags at me. My obsessive tendencies likely exacerbate this.

And I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately, as I’ve spent all this time at home due to my dying leg/recent hip replacement. And I think about my kids and their friendships. And my house and how I’ve just started having movie nights with family and friends. And how Champaign doesn’t have all the amenities on my wishlist but I have access to a lot of great parks and shops and restaurants.

I’ve been here five years. Not just in Champaign but at Volition. This is my longest stint at a job in my life–by some magnitude.

And I wonder if I can set down roots here. If I can put away the paranoia and fear and just relax. Just enjoy life and the area and, yeah, some times will be harder than others but maybe it’s worth pushing through.

I wonder. And I think maybe I can.

It might be time for me to catch my breath.

This is gonna be mostly old hat to most writers, I reckon, but every author goes through their own journey and such so this is new and revelatory to me, at the very least.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the core essence of story lately in light of a) always wanting to get better at my craft and b) having a novel make the agent rounds to some initial interest but not enough to seal a deal.

And that initial interest is a really good data point to have. I managed to move beyond the query stage with a good handful of agents but the manuscript didn’t connect enough for them to say “Yes, I must have this!” What that’s telling me is that I am far enough into my novel-writing ability to have a solid concept and my query was good enough to pique their interest but the work itself wasn’t bulletproof which is where I ultimately want my writing to be.

Turning that over, and working on my 30k word Little Fears novel, The Wolf Pact, has caused a couple thoughts to bubble to the surface.

Thought One: What’s the story about?

More a question that a thought but it’s the first question I need to answer before moving forward. It’s essential.

Now, when most folks ask “What the story about?” they mean (or at least get an answer pertaining to) the genre, details of the world and characters, and cool stuff that happens. But that’s all much lower level than I initially need to be.

For me, the answer to “What’s the story about?” is “This is a story about how [BLANK] learns [BLANK].”

Everything else is details.

In The Wolf Pact, Nate Torrance is a boy who discovers there’s a world of monsters that exists next to ours. Throughout his investigation, he makes friends with a girl named Jennifer Mills who has her own tie to monsters and, together, they uncover the truth about some wolf attacks in the area.

But, really, The Wolf Pact is a story about how Nate Torrance learns about friendship.” As his oldest friendship with his neighbor starts to fall apart, he builds a new friendship with Jennifer. That’s the essence of the story.

Also, that second blank is the story’s theme. “Friendship” is the theme of The Wolf Pact.

Thought Two: What about the protagonist is being challenged?

Okay, so this thought is another question. And it stems from the first.

If this is a story about how Nate Torrance learns about friendship, what about Nate is being challenged that leads to an epiphany? In The Wolf Pact, Nate holds firm that friendships are fixed. They don’t change. They certainly don’t end. It’s one of his principles. That his neighbor, who is older than Nate, is moving on forces Nate to try to reclaim that friendship. Jennifer wants to be friends with Nate but the boy is resistant. Not due to a flaw in Jennifer but a flaw in himself.

Thought Three: How is the theme supported?

Okay, so now we’re onto question three which calls back to question one. How am I supporting the theme? Perhaps a better term is “exploring.”

I’m exploring the theme of friendship by presenting different sides of it: the neighbor is moving on from friendship. Jennifer is trying to build a new friendship with Nate. Nate is trying to learn how friendship works. The antagonists also address this theme of friendship which is tied into the book’s name. The titular wolf pact is a core expression of friendship and how beholden one is to a promise made in youth.

Thought Four: How does the protagonist change?

Hrm. So all these thoughts are questions. Good to know.

Okay, I know the story is about how Nate learns about friendship. I know his idea that friendships don’t change is what will be challenged throughout the story. And I know I’ll explore the theme of “friendship” by showing different perspectives and stages of it. But what will ultimately change about how Nate views friendship? Once he has all this information and has seen the theme of friendship from multiple viewpoints, what does he do about it?

I won’t spoil that in this post (you’ll have to read the book to find out) but the basic options are: he accepts that friendships change or he rejects that friendships change. There are additional levels of complexity to this of course but those are the top levels I’m concerning myself with.

In Sum

With those in mind, I was finally able to approach The Wolf Pact armed with the information I needed to start. Next came outlining, developing subplots (which go through their own version of this but with a mind of supporting the established theme), and then the actual writing.

I’ll be very interested to see how this all comes together in the finished project and how everyone reacts to it. Either way, these kinds of revelations help make my writing stronger which is my ultimate goal. Is it bulletproof yet? No. But it’s another level of armor and that’s good enough for now.

So this was unexpected.

Late in December, Adam Gauntlett—one of the folks behind the tabletop section of wildly popular gaming/geek site The Escapist—contacted me to see if I was interested in doing an interview about Little Fears. Of course, I jumped on it. I’m very happy to say that the interview is now up and I don’t sound nearly as dumb as I usually do.

Check it out here!

February was a bad month as far as getting any of my own writing done. All my energy was spent on work for the day job (which is awesome) but it left little time for finishing Five-Story Drop (the upcoming supplement for Streets of Bedlam) or getting words down on these six novels I’m writing this year.

As a result, that counter in the left column hasn’t budged a millimeter. (And none of you called me on it. FOR SHAME.) I hit a point where I simply couldn’t abide that. Yes, I was writing. I was writing five days at week at the job. But that’s no excuse. That’s not the point of the One-Year Plan. The One-Year Plan is about doing my own stuff. And I shouldn’t allow myself to make excuses or get distracted. Back in the saddle with me.

As it’s the middle of March now, I’ve revised my second novel from the YA Superhero book to this Middle Grade science fiction tale I’ve bandied about for a bit. It’s half the word count of the YA Superhero book, and maybe that’s a bit of a cheat, but I’m still learning and adapting to this whole process. The goal for me remains producing work that can be revised and pitched and hopefully sold. If the details change, I’m okay with that. And this book I’m working on currently is a lot of fun so there’s that. Half the joy of working on spec is the ability to do what you want to do.

So! Book 2: MG Sci-Fi has launched. Back to 1K a Day on it (in addition to 1K a Day on Five-Story Drop). Onward!

I finished a novel last night. I’m still a bit stunned by it honestly. It’s a Middle Grade novel, sure, so it’s 1/3 the size of a standard adult novel (what most folks think of when they think of a novel) but I hit the writing goal I was aiming for and the threshold for the market. (I even went over the goal as you can see by the bar to the left.)

I wrote my first novel (a 50k word YA book) back in 2007. That was almost six years ago and I can now finally say that wasn’t an isolated incident.

I’ve now finished two novels and each one was a learning process. Each proved I could do it. Each proved that failure stems not from my inability but from not being dedicated to getting it done. Each taught me a lot about the novel-writing process from the inside, the stuff you simply do not learn theoretically. Each one highlighted certain shortcomings of mine but also shined a light on some of my strengths. I came through each one with a list of things that worked and areas I needed to focus on both during the editing process and when approaching the next story. The process of each has been invaluable.

I look forward to starting my next novel in a couple days.

Before I move on to that next novel though, I thought I’d look back over the past month, talk about what worked, what didn’t, and what I aim to do now.

First off, I have a confession.

I Did a Bad Thing
I wrote without an outline. I know, I know. I wasn’t going to. Truth be told, this wasn’t even an existing idea from the Big List. It’s still Middle Grade horror, so it fit the slot, but I started with a premise and an opening scene then went from there. I didn’t know what was going to happen next most of the time. A lot of my daily word counts began and ended a single chapter. I made sure to curve each chapter into a cliffhanger or similar attachment point which made sure I had a launching pad for the next day’s writing.

This worked surprisingly well. I’d sometimes stop in the middle of a chapter and think about how to steer the story but having that cliffhanger goal gave me focus. It taught me about making sure each chapter bends, rises and falls—hitting the pavement with enough force to bounce back up right before you cut, insert page break, and follow that momentum into the next chapter.

That which moves the writer to write moves the reader to read.

Still, for my next book, I’m doing the outline. I’m taking some days to map out the big beats and do up some character sheets before I start.

I Learned Oh So Very Much
A bunch of writing advice I had read over the past few years suddenly made sense. What were previously good ideas gained a new sense of relevance and meaning when put into practice. The one that hit me in the face hardest was “The protagonist drives the story.” The hard truth is I’ve suffered from passive protagonist syndrome for a long time, loving the idea of the person who has to react to the situations in their life, but that’s just not a good idea. Your character is John Henry and the story is that mound of solid rock. You need to give your protagonist a hammer or they’re never going to tunnel their way through it. (We’ll ignore that whole “dying at the end” part.) Every single time I wondered why my story felt like it was dragging or falling flat, it was because I hadn’t given my protagonist an obstacle or some motivation or a reason to be where they are. I could sing that from the mountaintops, folks.

All Day Every Day Except the Days I Didn’t
I aimed for 1k every day. Most days, I hit that. A lot of days, especially in the beginning, I exceeded that considerably. A couple days, I did half that. A few days, I didn’t get any writing done at all. Some nights, I was done with my 1000 words in half an hour. Other nights, it took 90 minutes or more. But I stayed in front of the computer and wrote.

A lot of days, I didn’t feel like writing anything at all. As I said above, I missed some days. All but one was due to exhaustion. Two of the nights, I fell asleep before the kids did. My day job went through being auctioned and purchased by a new company during all this and that was distracting—but I still made count almost every single day. “Not feeling like writing” isn’t good enough. Being physically unable to focus, fine. I’d skip or let myself only do 500 words or so on those days. But I’m not idly wondering if maybe I’d like to write a book here. I decided I was writing novels this year. That meant committing to the work.

When I initially started 1k a Day, I worked mostly as a freelancer so I would often have time during the morning or afternoon to fit in the words. This time around, I work a day job—which is also as a writer—and almost all my writing happened in the evening. The exceptions to that are the weekends where I wrote during the mornings but finding the time usually meant not watching that show, not playing that video game, not getting that extra sleep. Carving out the time meant sacrifice. But, sitting here with a draft in my hand, I don’t miss the sleep, don’t care I’m behind on my shows, and I don’t regret not playing that game. The sacrifices were worth it.

Make No Mistake: The Book is Rough
It’s not good. I’m not being immodest here. The book has problems with tone, pacing, structure, and character/event contradictions and inconsistencies but that’s okay. This is a first draft. I wasn’t aiming for perfection; I was aiming for done. I can’t edit a blank page but I can edit this. I can revise this. I can make it better. Will it ever be a book worth shopping around? I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe not. It doesn’t matter. I finished a Middle Grade novel. Which means I met my goal. Which means I can finish another one. That is what’s important for now.

What’s Next
I’m shifting things up a bit. I have a real itch to write that YA Superhero book so I’m going to do that next. I don’t mind that I’m shifting things around a bit. As long as they’re not impeding my forward momentum, I’m willing to ride the wave a bit. I’ve already started the wordometer on the left. Since February’s a short month, and I already missed some days finishing the first book, and the YA goal is 50k, I’ll probably do a midpoint check-in rather than wait until the end of March to update.

Until then, I’ll be writing. Doing that 1k every day I can. By the end of March, I should have a finished draft of a YA book. That’s exciting.

Talk to you later.

The grand odometer of life has flipped another digit, and I’m staring across a field of 365 chances to fulfill some dreams until it does so again.

As I talked about back in September, I aim to become an honest-to-goodness novelist this year. My current plan is two Middle Grade books, two Young Adult books, and two Adult books. Though I’ve swapped the order of the MG books from what I detailed back then, that’s still the basic layout I’m sticking to.

Because failing in public sucks, and the shroud of anonymity allows for too many excuses, I’m posting my word counts in the sidebar, starting with Book 1: MG Horror (um, not official title), so you all can keep me honest. I’m going to incorporate updating the word counter as part of my daily writing routine so I should be able to keep it current.

The goal is 1,000 words every day. Only takes 30-60 minutes to do that much so I have the time. The trick is making use of it.

If you’re so inclined, I invite each and every one of you to call me on it when I don’t update that counter. I’m sure I’ll have some excuse but you have full license to call me on my crap. Email, Twitter, Facebook, IM, even by phone or text if you have my info. Harass me. Keep me honest. I’d sure appreciate it if you did.

About a month ago, I talked about how I needed to add new direction in my life (“A Metaphorical Haircut“) and that, even though I was sitting pretty with a great job at a great company, I was left partially unfulfilled because I very much still wanted to break into the fiction market. At the end of that post, I declared that I was going to write a novel.

Well, I’m going to retract that.

Next year, I’m writing six novels.

Now, before you think I’ve gone Forbeckian in my madness, these are not all full-length adult novels. I will be writing two Middle-Grade novels, two Young Adult novels, and two Adult novels. Word count-wise, that’s two 30k books, two 50k books, and two 90k books for a total of 340k words. Totally doable inside twelve months.

I’ve long maintained a list of potential projects for the day I acquire infinite monkeys to make use of all these typewriters I have laying around. I revisit the list periodically to cull the bad ideas, add new (hopefully not bad) ideas, and lay out a sort of priority. It’s an intimidating thing to stare at such a list and realize all these babies may never be born. I faced the same situation over a decade ago when I was trying to sort out which of my many game ideas I was going to work on (the winner being the game that turned into the original Little Fears).

Ultimately, back then, I had to pick one of the better ideas and just run with it. Because if I didn’t start on any of them then none would ever get done. So yesterday, I went through the list and added up, in an ideal world, how long it would take me to bring the better ideas to form.

Turns out, it’d take about five years.

I went through the list again and pulled out the best ideas—the strongest ideas, the most marketable ideas—and it turns out, at 1k words a day, I could get them all to first-draft format inside a year.

The fact that two books stood out from each category was coincidental. But it works nicely. I get to ramp up word count every two projects and also use some non-writing time the first half of the year to research and plan out the adult novels (one of which is quite intimidating plot-wise).

The goal here is first-draft quality. If I can revisit any during that time, great!, but I’m aiming only for a solid draft.

As for schedule, here’s how that looks:

Book 1: MG Drama – January 2013
Book 2: MG Horror – February 2013
Book 3: YA Superhero – March & April 2013
Book 4: YA Sci-Fi – May & June 2013
Book 5: Adult Drama – July, August, & September 2013
Book 6: Adult Thriller – October, November, & December 2013

Something I really like, seeing it laid out like this, is the diversity of not only the market but the genres as well. I get to scratch a lot of different itches here. And autumn is the perfect season to write the last book which is a nice coincidence.

The rest of this year, I aim to clear my extracurricular plate in preparation for The One-Year Plan. That includes all the projects remaining on the Streets of Bedlam docket and a potential short story.

Throughout The One-Year Plan, I’ll run word count trackers and post updates on this site so you all can help keep me honest and on track. I’m sure I’ll be looking for first readers as I finalize each draft and I’ll use this as a means of getting some volunteers if you folks might be interested.

So. Onward. Come 2013, I stop wanting to be a novelist and I finally become one.

I first wrote about Operation: Awesome back in June 2010 but I put the plan laid out in that post into practice much earlier. A lot of 2010 was focused on redefining myself, pushing myself, and changing my entire creative process. I realized how toxic it had become, how little was actually getting done, and I knew I had to do things differently in order to survive in the creative field.

Operation: Awesome was put to test in summer 2010 when I was brought in to work on High Voltage Software‘s Conduit 2. They put a lot of power in my hands and I did not want to disappoint. I worked hard on that game and had a lot of fun doing it. When it came out earlier this year, I was thrilled. I had a video game on the shelf that I could point to and go, “See that? I wrote that.” What an amazing feeling.

That gig was a big test of Operation: Awesome but it was just the beginning. I was still shuffling off a lot of bad habits and baggage. I decided to do some small projects to establish a better writing habit. I launched the Campfire Tales line for Little Fears Nightmare Edition. I originally intended for that series to run twelve straight episodes but had to stall it at three. I can say the reason was at least somewhat noble: I was busy working on the first full-sized supplement for LFNE, Book 2: Among the Missing. I was also doing some freelance work in that time, including fiction for an upcoming tabletop game line, some development work on a (sadly) cancelled project, and contributed to Chuck Wendig and Lance Weiler’s Sundance Film Festival transmedia project Pandemic 1.0/Hope is Missing. I launched Book 2: Among the Missing in March 2011. A ten-year retrospective of the original corebook from 2001 saw release as Happy Birthday, Little Fears over the summer. Also over the summer, I signed a contract with Human Head Studios to work on Prey 2. I was brought on as the Narrative Designer and Writer for the project. In that time, not only did I wrangle the story for Prey 2 but I lent some insight and ideas to a variety of projects.

On top of that, I had some fiction published, did some layout work for friends, and added to some really fun projects such as Clint and Cassie Krause’s Don’t Walk in Winter Wood. I even returned to the Campfire Tales line for three more episodes, putting out Season Two this past fall. No way I would have had the discipline to fit all this into my schedule prior to Operation: Awesome. While I certainly wasn’t a saint in my time management, I did far better than I ever did previously.

A lot of things started to fall into place this past year and I knew it was mine to fumble. I worked hard to make sure I didn’t do that. When my contract at Human Head ended, I began work on getting a new project up, running, and ready for public approval. I took the momentum of joy and satisfaction from working at Human Head and funneled it into new projects aimed at new goals. After launching the Kickstarter for a new Savage Worlds setting called Streets of Bedlam in November, my plan was rewarded almost immediately as generous backers fulfilled the initial goal in under three days. I am still in awe of that.

I’ve changed a lot as a creative and a person since starting Operation: Awesome and it really all came down to taking my ambitions seriously, investing in my dreams, doing the work, and no longer accepting excuses. One of the side effects of that, besides actually releasing product, was I started to expect more and better from others as well. I was fortunate enough this past year to find myself in a room with a half-dozen highly-creative people who were firing on all cylinders, demanding better from everyone else, and the sensation was exhilarating.

I still have a lot to do. I don’t think there is an endgame for Operation: Awesome, only a fail state. And I have no intention of failing.

2011 had a lot of ups and downs but it ended on some very high notes for me. I learned a ton, did some good work, got an award nomination from IGN, and have a lot more projects on my done list. I had some high ambitions for the year and, while I didn’t hit them all, I hit enough to mark the chalk in the win column.

Coming into 2012, I have even higher ambitions with much more at stake. As of this writing, over 150 people have put their money where my mouth is and backed Streets of Bedlam. My dance card for the first three months is almost fully booked with that one project. I’m leaving some wiggle room for a couple sweet pick-up gigs and plotting for the April project but Streets of Bedlam is my main focus for that time. I’m really excited for it.

I plan to spend April and May of next year writing a novel. I haven’t finished a novel since I completed my attempt at a Young Adult book for Little Fears back in 2007. I want published novels under my belt, both lit and genre. I plan to focus on Middle Grade but want to do some adult and YA as well. That may be the biggest test of Operation: Awesome yet. I look forward to it.

I have many other plans beyond as well. And I might even pick up some high-profile gigs, fates willing.

With Operation: Awesome, I took an honest assessment of myself and mapped out a battle plan to start changing who I was into who I wanted to be. For the above reason and beyond, I’m glad I did. Here’s looking forward to 2012 and even more awesome.