Okay, I didn't accomplish all of my New Year's goals for last year. Que sera. It was an interesting year, to be sure, and I've got plenty of excuses for not achieving them but I won't go into all that again. You can thank me, but to tell the truth, I'm just tired of rehashing them.

On the positive side, I did make another fifteen sales in 2005, bringing my total up to 50 since Lon Prater at Neverary bought the first one in January of 2004. Among those fifteen were sales to Aeon Magazine, Shadowed Realms and Interzone. At least that's one year's goal met: my first honest-to-goodness professional sale (as defined by SFWA.)

They say if you don't set goals, you can't possibly reach them. In that vein, here are my overly ambitious goals for 2006:

Write at least 1000 pages of new fiction. Now before you freak out, let's pull those numbers apart. Let's say I write five days a week and allow myself three weeks off for vacation. That leaves me 49 weeks of writing five days a week. 245 days. I write on average about four pages an hour. So, each day I'll finish about six pages, which means I'd be on schedule for over 1400 pages, leaving me plenty of leeway to meet my goal. 1000 pages is a pace of about three novels a year, and I can live with that for now.

I'm not going to set any sales goals this year. I'd like to write a ton of new short stories for the first six months and then work on a novel toward the end of the year. I need to get more work circulating as I haven't written much over the last three months since I moved to Cleveland. Too much going on and too much stress to worry much about it, not to mention editing the anthology.

Physically I'm not going to set any weight loss goals this year. Instead, I'll talk numbers: I want my chest to be at least five inches bigger around than my waist. I'm tired of it being the other way around.

"V," not "A." :-)

And last, but certainly not least, I needs to make some friends here in Cleveland. We simply must make an effort to get out more. It's hard for me to make friends. I can be such a recluse and it's not like I'm not opinionated, so it makes finding like-minded people a little tough.

It was a tough year, and I'm looking forward to a little bit of happiness and productivity next year.

I deserve at least that much, right?

Right?

Wipe that smirk off your face.

Joseph Haines, signing off from The Edge of the Abyss.