Finishing up 2011 and looking forward to 2012.

Whew, it's been a busy year. Let's see: I wrote four books, two of which will actually see the light of day at some point. I started this blog. I took a novella that I had written a year and a half previously at that point, decided to give it a thorough scrubbing and self-publish it as an experiment, and then promptly spent nine months and four drafts whipping it into shape to be a novel. (And got my face eaten off with all of the secondary characters' stories along the way.) I learned more about editing than I ever would have thought possible, and I discovered that Twitter is actually pretty fun and that formatting is not that hard. Not bad, all in all.

I'm not usually one for New Year's resolutions, but I am a Type A who loves making lists, so here's to 2012! I will:

1) Complete the editing on Fire with Fire. The second draft will be completed in a few weeks, after which I'll deliver it to my critique group and then eventually my copyeditor for a Spring 2012 release. Second drafts take nearly as long as first drafts for me (and FwF has several structural issues in its current state), but things thankfully move faster after that.

2) While the critique group is ripping apart Book Two, start drafting Book Four. (Book Three was my NaNoWriMo and needs another month or two to sit in a drawer and think about what it's done.) I'll keep using this leapfrog method throughout the year to get Books Two, Three, and Four out before 2013 rolls around.

3) Meet my Get Your Words Out 2012 pledge. I've chosen a less ambitious goal than in previous years, given the amount of time I'm going to be spending on editing and promoting, but it's still going to be a tall order.

Oh, and I'm gonna read some books. Here are five of my favorites from 2011, and I'm hoping that you can make them your favorites in 2012:

Heroine Addiction by Jennifer Matarese. This book is a clever, cracktastic, and utterly hilarious take on the superhero genre. It's the only book I've ever read in which a zombie outbreak is something that you look at and shrug over before getting back to the plot.

Seed by Ania Ahlborn. Charlotte is one of the creepiest and most tragic children I've ever encountered.

The Jakarta Pandemic by Steven Konkoly. Fantastic, claustrophobic examination of how easily the world can go to hell.

Sugar&Spice by Saffina Desforges. In addition to making me realize that I know way too much about serial killers, it's just a flat-out fantastic and well-researched thriller.

Jenny Pox by JL Bryant. I probably won't have time to do a full review before the first, but I was quite simply blown away by how fantastic this book is. Pick it up at your first opportunity.