I’m splitting my look forward to 2019 into two parts: my own writing, and my writing-related business plans.

In terms of writing in the near future, I’m participating in the 100kwords100days challenge again, and the project for that has the title “Meltdown”. It’s a thriller. It’s something I wrote (badly) a few years ago, but I’ve now restructured it, and I’m going to rewrite it, hopefully better than I wrote it originally. It currently stands at 47k bad words, but with the new structure in place, I’m expecting it to become well over 60k of hopefully better words during the first month or two of 2019.

In November last year, for NaNoWriMo, I rewrote another novel I’d part-written which was called Deceit (although the title changed several times during the process, and used to be called Circles of Corruption). This was another thriller, showing political corruption surrounding the UK activities in Syria. I’m pleased with how it turned out, and that’s now ready for a first edit before sending out to beta readers.

Short fiction-wise, I STILL have the dark Christmas collection that I collated a year or two ago, that needs a serious editing session, but that will be later this year (again). Also, I have the beginnings of a collection of 500-word stories, which I might publish later this year.

Non-fiction wise, I have an outline plan for a non-fiction book which describes my outlining and plotting method. That’s a bit meta, I know, planning a planning book, but there you go. I think the method works for me, and hopefully might be insightful for others. Look out for something which may, or may not, be called Save The SnowCat.

Away from writing, there are two writing-related businesses I’m involved with.
The first is Writer.Support http://writer.support which aims to support writers (geddit?) for all levels of ability. As mentioned in the 2018 roundup, I help writers from beginning writing, short fiction, memoir; through to editing, self-publishing and ghost writing; and beyond into marketing and promotion.
The second business is The Novel Makers http://thenovelmakers.com which is an expansion of the work I and two colleagues have been undertaking with our wonderful critique group, Frinton Writers. The three of us will focus on helping novel writers from the initial steps, through completion and into and beyond the first draft status. Our ethos is to turn writers into authors. The business will help through manuscript appraisals, online courses, one-to-one mentoring, and eventually workshops and writing retreats.

In addition to all that, there are some ‘ideas’ which may or may not come to fruition during the year”

• Vlogs – I have ideas for three entertaining (hopefully) writing-related vlogs (video blogs), which will comprise edited videos published to YouTube.
• Publish Literary Roadhouse reviews on website – I have been a co-host of a Literary Fiction podcast for several years now https://www.literaryroadhouse.com. I aim to publish my reviews of both literary short stories and novels on my own writing website. Because I can.
• Proper blog schedule – yes, a recurring dream this. A proper blogging schedule with subjects planned in advance. Dream on, Gerald.
• Local and online book clubs – as authors, we should be reading widely from both within and outside our favoured writing genres. So I hope to form at least one reading group during the year to encourage reading and discussion of general fiction.

Phew! A pretty big list, eh? Aim for the stars, and you might hit the moon, and all that.
Let me know what your aims and goals are for the current year. Because without a destination to aim for, we are wandering aimlessly.