2012 started off as a good year for me, writing-wise, and then sort of fell apart as it went on. While continuing to promote my debut novel, Brutal Light, I finished the first draft of biopunk novella The Morpheist, wrote a weird short story that got accepted into Fading Light: An Anthology of the Monstrous, and started in on the first draft of mad science novel This Island Monstrous. And then, somewhere in the belly of summer, life events outside of writing barged in, and didn’t so much unbarge as slowly seep back into the shadows. My fall and winter writing ended up being short bursts of activity between large swatches of unfocused meh-ness and my growing, news-driven desire to dig a hole, jump in it, and pull it in after me.

But the good thing about a new year is that it gives me a chance to reset my head. I’ve been taking a look at what I’ve got going, what I’d like to do, and what I think I can realistically do in the upcoming year, and it basically looks like this:

* Wander through park, looking for that damn squirrel.

* Blow up moon.

* Telepathically control a pack of howler monkeys, arm them with machetes and rum, and–

Wups. Wrong list! Let’s try this:

* Redraft, polish, and send The Morpheist out into the world. This was last fall’s goal, if you’ll recall. This time I mean it.

* Write, redraft, polish, and send out four or five short stories. I’m already working on an urban fantasy one, though I’m taking no bets on what the others will be. I only have one short work right now that I’m pushing around to different places, and would like to have more.

* Finish the first draft of This Island Monstrous. I’ve got a good first quarter done, I just need to get cracking on the rest… and figure out how it’s all going to end.

* Write the first draft of biopunk novella The Fabulist, wherein one of the supporting characters in The Morpheist takes over as the main protagonist.

That’s about it. I’ll likely scale back blogging to once every two weeks, at least for the first half of the year, just to give me more focus-on-words-on-page-dammitall time. I may write all my blog entries with bullet points from here on out. I may take a stab at gathering up all the short fiction I’ve had published so far into a collection for self-publication. I may see how the howler monkeys do with a few quarts of bourbon and a word processor.

So. Yay? Yay.

Gary W. Olson is the author of the dark fantasy novel Brutal Light and a contributor to the dark fiction anthology Fading Light. His blog originates here. Photo: Andres/Bigstock.com.