Back in January 2012 I established some publishing goals for the year. Since I just did the same for 2013, I thought I should go back and see how did on those goals. I wrote them in three posts last January. I’ll summarize them here and tell how I did.

Fiction

Publish my second short story, titled “Too Old To Play”. I did this in January, exactly on schedule. It’s only sold three copies, but it’s there and available.

Publish my novel Doctor Luke’s Assistant. I did this in March, exactly on schedule. It’s been my best selling work so far.

Publish my novel In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People. I did this in August, a little later than I’d hoped, but I delayed it for consideration by a publisher, and by then I was too engaged with other projects to jump right back in this. It isn’t selling, but baseball season is just around the corner.

Publish another short story in the Danny Tompkins series. I did not do this. Instead I wrote a different short story and published it, and it’s sold 10 copies.

Begin work on my third novel. Okay, I suppose this was a writing goal, not a publishing goal. I did this, beginning China Tour in October.

Non-Fiction: Articles

The no-money one of these is Suite101.com. I did not write any articles for Suite101 this year. As I wrote in January, “The site is soon to go through a major re-vamp. I’m waiting to see what they do, and if anything I want to write on will still be suitable.” The revamp occurred. I’m making a little more residual income there than I thought I would, but I still don’t expect to write any articles for them any time soon, almost certainly not in 2013.

The one for decent money is Buildipedia.com. As planned I wrote for Buildipedia for several months. Then they axed my column. I haven’t had any ideas for feature articles for them, so that prospect is dormant for a while and probably will remain so.

The third gig is a site named Decoded Science. I wrote and published one article with them in 2012. I still like the concept of Decoded Science. I like the owner/editor. I just haven’t had any ideas for articles. I wanted to do a series of articles on low impact development. The owner/editor was favorable, but I haven’t found time or energy to do them. It’s a possibility in 2013, thought not all that likely.

Non-Fiction: Books

The Candy Store Generation. I wrote this and published it in July 2012, more or less on schedule. I liked how it came out. It’s sold about 15 copies, which is a big disappointment.

John Cheney of Newbury, Massachusetts. This was to be a family genealogy book. I found no time to add to the research I’ve already done, so did not write anything on this. Maybe some day.

Articles written about floodplain engineering that would form the basis of a decent book. Yes, they would, but I’ve done nothing on this other than brainstorm a little.

A second book in the Documenting America series: the Civil War years. I wrote the first chapter of this, or most of the first chapter, then abandoned it for the time being. The research was going to be much more than I thought. I read some as research, maybe 10 to 15 hours of reading. I wish I could have written it, and hope to do it in 2013.

So, I didn’t do too badly, did I? I hope I do as well, relative to my goals, in 2013.