The year is almost over! I know this is two weeks early, but let’s face it, as soon as my kid is out of school for the holidays, I won’t be getting any work done. So here’s my 2016 wrap up post! Many wonderful writerly things happened this year, and they’ve made me even more excited for 2017.
In Publishing:
City of Legends was published by Alloy Entertainment! I originally self-published my teen superhero series, but Alloy bought it, revamped it, and made it better than ever! This was my first foray into traditional publishing and I couldn’t have worked with nicer people. (PS- if you haven’t read COL yet, Amazon has them all half off for the month of December!)
The Breakup Support Group was published! I really adore this book. I wrote it during the breaks from editing the City of Legends series and it become very close to my heart. It was picked up by a small publisher in the spring and was released in the fall. I really lucked out with such a cute cover!
In writing:
I wrote 651,344 words this year. That’s an average of 1800 words a day. WHOA. Even for someone who writes every day, this feels like a lot. This all comes down to about ten novels, WIPs, and drafts, some unfinished, some published, and one agented and on submission. *fingers crossed*
I probably wrote half of that in 2015, which was my first year as a full time writer. And probably half of that the year before. Trust me, all of those words weren’t great, but they taught me something. I’ve learned so much in these nearly 2 years of writing full time, and the most important rule of all is this: Write Every Day! Write often. Write every chance you get.
The secondary rule is this: Don’t beat yourself up if you miss a day. Life happens.
In reading:
2016 was a great year for books. So many wonderful YA titles were released, and I’m still not done reading them all. My TBR pile has at least 50 books in it right now, and I’ll be using the rest of the year to read as much of them as I can. So while this list is nowhere near inclusive, these are my favorite books of 2016:
Pearl by Deirdre Riordan Hall
Holding up the Universe by Jennifer Niven
If I Fix You by Abigail Johnson
The Sun is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon
Shadow of a Girl by Shannon Greenland
It Wasn’t Always Like This by Joy Preble
We Own the Night by Ashley Poston
How was your 2016? What was your favorite read this year? Did you accomplish anything spectacular? Let me know in the comments!
Shakespearean Insult Bandages. Quirky insults in bandage form to cover all those blisters you got from typing so fast!
Library card socks. It’s nostalgic and cute and practical because most people wear socks all the time. I personally don’t, because here in Texas it’s always flip flop season, but I’d make an exception for these adorable things.
