A Little Too Late

I was filled with the Christmas spirit this month, I guess, and I thought it would be cool to put together a new collection of Christmas stories like my already released Christmas Creatures. I do like to write Christmas tales during December, so I didn't have to be cajoled into it. The trouble is that, because it was already December, I couldn't get all the stories out in time for folks to read them during the season. 

Today's post is the case in point. I just published three stories yesterday. All Christmas stories. All published after Christmas. Whoops! I'll tell you about them anyway. The first one is called "Eve of the Living Dead." 

Here's what I wrote to tantalize the reader without giving away the plot too much:

The zombie holocaust has descended on the world and Gage is on his own, all his friends and family gone, looking for a reason to go on with the necessary struggle to survive in this harsh situation. Winter has come to Wyoming, where he'd fled in hopes of finding a place with less of the shambling undead, and Gage finds a farmhouse where he can shelter from the weather. Inside, there is a big surprise waiting for him. He also learns that Christmas is here again, and jolly old St. Nicholas is still making his rounds even in this world of never-ending horror.

That probably needs some work. Just because I can write doesn't mean that I can write ad copy. That's a different skill, and I think I need to learn a lot more about it if I want to be a self-published author.

That one is a big, full-sized story, 13,984 words, and I think it's pretty good. I really like that one, and I bet you will too.

Next story I published was "Frosty Force."

Here's what I wrote to tantalize a reader about "Frosty Force" without totally giving it away again.

When Dixon inadvertently offended an unhinged and aggressive kid at school, the boy shows up at his house with his two brothers to get revenge. This kid and his family are into witchcraft. Dixon and his father assumed they were crazy, but are they...

This one is shorter. It's a flash fiction story that only runs 1,557 words. I forced myself to write something much smaller just to prove that I could still do it since everything I write comes in around 15,000 words these days. I priced it down at 99 cents, although, I wonder if a shorty like this is supposed to be even cheaper. Pricing of eBooks seems a little crazy to me sometimes. I guess if you sell a lot, it might be worth it to lower your price to fifty cents or twenty-five cents.

The last story I published today was "Artificial Christmas."

Here's what I wrote about it to entice you to check it out:

When I met Santa on a beach in Tahiti, I knew something was wrong. Christmas had changed forever. Things would never be the same. Oh, did I mention, Santa wasn't in Tahiti for his post-Christmas retreat, oh no. He was there on Christmas Eve, the very day he should be out in his sleigh delivering presents...

This one is also shorter, but not flash fiction levels. It's 3,252 words. I really like this one too. It's about AI, robotics, and what the future has in store for humanity, and it's something that I think about a lot. Hopefully, you'll find it interesting too.

The worst part about all of this is that I'm still not done. I have one more Christmas story that I'm writing now. I'm 7,500 words into a tale called "Unmaking Memories" that I should hopefully finish by New Year's Eve. My plan is to start into a novel on New Year's Day, and begin my new push for 2025, so I need to get there. Of course, that means that I have one more Christmas story to put out after Christmas has passed us by. Oh well, I guess you do what you gotta do.

Redesign

I just finished publishing my first novel, Sunny. When I was working on getting it ready, I did things my usual way, creating my own cover for the book, but I just wasn't sure what was best. I had a couple of options that I couldn't decide between. 

So, I asked Rish. He gave me his opinion, but it didn't satisfy me. I asked my daughter, who is the one who created the fairy picture for me in the first place, what she preferred. Well...she sat down at the computer and took over.

She thought it would be better if the background had a kind of gradient, and if the font was different, and if the title and the picture were embossed, and so on and so on. In no time, it was quite different. This was the final version.

Just the comparison of the two yellow backgrounds is enough to make me think, what the hell have I been doing all this time? I have no sense of design whatsoever.

I at least have enough of a sense of design to know that the new image is vastly superior to the old one I'd done. It got me wondering what my daughter could do if she took a look at my old covers for books that were already out. I thought Christmas Creatures was the most likely suspect. Here's what it looked like right now:

She went right to work again, and smoke started rising off the CPU as it tried to keep up with all her changes. She never does anything halfway, and after a long time messing with it, trying several options, and abandoning some ideas, she had a cover that now looked like this:

She also re-did the wraparound cover for the paperback and hardcovers for me.

Original:

And new version:

I bought an eBook about marketing self-published books, and one of the main things the author stressed was having someone professional design your covers. He harped on that over and over, bringing it up again and again across various chapters and sections. Looking at these two covers helps me to understand exactly what he was talking about. I can't afford to hire some professional to design my covers for me...but, I did sire one of those people. She seemed awfully amenable to designing covers. I guess I really need to have her sit down and do all my covers for me, it seems.

Last Christmas

Okay, day three of publishing this year's Christmas stories on Amazon.

I was talking with Rish on the phone the other day, and if I remember right, I quoted that goofy line from The Beach Boys "Little Saint Nick" song.

"Christmas comes this time each year," I said.

"Yeah, about that...we need to put a stop to that. I'm going to declare it right now. This is the last Christmas. No more of this coming back again and again, year after year," Rish said.

It was a throwaway joke in the middle of our conversation, but something about that really interested me. What if Christmas wasn't coming back next year. What if this was the last Christmas ever? What would that be like? And how could that happen? (And of course, the story had a built in title because of that hit Wham! song).

I was in need of a new story idea, because I was about to finish the story I was working on, so I put some thought in, and after skipping past the first few obvious answers, I found an idea that I liked. I started writing, and just a few days ago, I finished it up. Now it's ready for you to enjoy on this fine holiday season.

It's the story of Adrian who has a friend who has a strange talent. Every now and then, the guy stares off into space. Then his eyes roll up in his head and he pronounces some kind of prediction of the future. He's been doing it since he was in middle school, and the predictions always come true. Always.

Today, Adrian's friend performed that routine and said that this would be Adrian's last Christmas. Adrian's eyes bulged. Did he hear that right? Did his friend just predict his imminent death? What could he do? What would you do?

If that sounds like a good story to you, you can check it out over at Amazon. It's now available. I hope you enjoy it.

A Christmas Miracle

Here's another Christmas story that I wrote this past month for y'all to enjoy. I just got it published over on Amazon.

In this one, Eric inherits the sheet music to an old Christmas carol written by his great-grandfather. When he plays it, he finds that, not only is it a catchy, earworm of a song, but it has remarkable qualities. It's heals people of their maladies. Amazing! It's "A Christmas Miracle!" He can't believe it...except that the carol also has a dark side...

You can find it now on Amazon. Head over there and check it out...and Merry Christmas!

Christmas Eve Eve

Here's a new Christmas story that I just published on Amazon!

This story is my attempt to do a Rish Outfield story. What do you think, does this sound like a story Rish could have written?

When Frank took a retreat to a remote Scandinavian village in search of peace and quiet to write his novel, he never expected to run into the mysterious and frightening Christmas tradition of the local residents. It's vile and and evil, and goes against everything that he believes. They say it's for his protection, but how could it protect him? And from what? Surely it won't matter if he refuses to participate...

So, if you're interested, it's now available over on Amazon. Check it out. It will certainly bring you some holiday cheer...or something like that.

Sunny & Gray

About a decade or more ago, I came up with an idea about a boy named Robbie who catches a dragonfly with a net, and when he tries to take the dragonfly out it panics and bites him. When he gets bitten, everything changes. His eyes are opened to a world that he never guessed existed. The dragonfly in his net is not a dragonfly at all, but a fairy in disguise. Humans aren't able to see through these disguises, but now Robbie can see the truth.

Robbie is enchanted and amazed by this new world, and spends all his time learning about it. He becomes friends with the fairy who bit him, bringing him into this new reality, and their adventure unfolds from there.

I posted the first chapter of this book on here all the way back in 2014, and I struggled my way through the story from there. I posted chapter two as well a few months later. Then, as was usually my problem, I couldn't keep at it. I never let it go, though. Several years later, I got back on the horse, and posted chapter three in 2017.

That was the turning point for the book and for my writing in general. It was the first time that I ever managed to start writing with any frequency. In 2017, I wrote every day for nearly four months. The majority of that time was spent on Sunny & Gray. I posted chapter four in March of that year, and I pushed onward until I finished the whole novel on, from my calculations, April 20th.

I remember that night, because I was so excited. I'd just written "the end" on my very first novel! I couldn't believe that I'd actually achieved such a feat.  I was now, officially, a novelist! I'd actually achieved something positive for once in my life! I felt like Fezzik in The Princess Bride. "Then I saw them. Four white horses, and I thought, there are four of us, if we ever find the lady...oh, hello lady!" I could just imagine Inigo Montoya smiling down at me and saying, "You did something right!"

Don't worry. I didn't let it go to my head. I stilll kept struggling. I lost my mojo with writing less than month later, and had to fight to gain it back over and over again...but something good did come from that day. I wrote a book. I wrote my very first full-length novel. 

It's been seven years since I finished it, and there have been plenty of struggles since then, but I'm finally in a position to put it before you and allow anyone who wants to read it to do so. That's right, Sunny, book one of the Sunny & Gray trilogy is available on Amazon.

I made sure to put all three formats, eBook, paperback, and hardcover, out at the same time this time. The audiobook will have to wait. My voice still hasn't come all the way back yet from when I was sick, so my audio production is falling way behind, but I'll get there. I think I'm going to try to really step it up over the next while once my voice returns to full strength.

I really love Sunny. I think it's a great book, and I hope y'all will agree. Check it out and enjoy. If you're wondering whether you would like it or not, read those first few chapters that I posted. That'll probably be a pretty good indicator.

Book two of the trilogy is already written, and I'll be preparing it for publication next. Book three still needs to be written, and I guess, depending on how the first two are received, I'll get that done in due time. It's one of my favorite worlds to visit, so I'll be happy to finish it off.

Paper Copy

If you're like me, and you like to collect physical copies of books and display them on shelves to pretend like you're way smarter than you are, then you'll be excited to know that Rish Outfield now has a new book available in a physical copy. It's going to be so great to get one. People will think I'm smart enough to actually understand the intricacies and themes in these fancy story books. You can get them in paperback, hardcover, and eBook. I'm sure they will also eventually be available in audio, but that's always a big and difficult process, so it'll be a little in the future.

I mention Rish's book on my blog because...well, we're friends, but also, I had a big hand in creating the book. I helped him get the thing formatted, designed, edited, and so forth. So, the better it does, the better I feel about myself. And trust me, I could use a reason to feel good about myself. 

The book is a collection of the first five stories in the Lara and the Witch series, namely:

• "Like a Good Neighbor"
• "You're in Good Hands"
• "Made Just for You"
• "The People We Touch"
• "Here to Help"
  

It also includes a short little piece of flash fiction Rish wrote in which Widow Holcomb goes to a parent-teacher conference with Lara's teacher. That one is called:

• "A Short Interlude"

He also wrote author's notes for all the stories and a new introduction that starts the book off. It's really just too much. The guy is a prince to give you so much, amiright? For a little preview of what you get, here's the cover it comes with:

The book also has several illustrations inside, which is a new thing that we haven't tried in any of our books yet. I was thinking of doing it for my short story collections, but I never did pull the trigger on it, so this is the big debut! Here's a couple of the pictures you get.

Wouldn't you love to own a book with snazzy pictures like that inside? That's right. I said snazzy. I bet you haven't heard that word in twenty years.

Anyway, I figured I'd come on here and trumpet a little about Rish's book, because I know that he won't. Not that my added voice does a lot to amplify the message, but maybe one person that wouldn't have known about his book otherwise will, and that should be good enough, shouldn't it?

My Yearly Reminder

It's that time of year again, so I guess I need to remind you that I have an awesome collection of Christmas stories assembled for you to make your holiday bright.

This year, all the various versions are now available. You can pick it up in eBook, paperback, hardcover, and even audiobook. Check it out on Amazon. It's best to pick it up soon, I think, to make sure that you can enjoy it during the Christmas season.

Just thought I'd let you know. Carry on...and happy holidays!

Physical Media

When I talked about my goals for October, I lamented that I was only able to get the eBook version of Wizards and Angels published before the month ended. The paperback and hardcovers still hadn't come to fruition. Well, I'm here to report that they are now ready. I worked my butt off, and the hardcovers are ready for you lovely people.

If you've ever wanted a collection of paperback or hardcover books from B.D. Anklevich, now is your chance. Head over to Amazon and grab your copy! This is going to be the last volume of the short fiction collection for a while. It's time to move on to publishing novels. Coming up next is Sunny & Gray, Book One: Sunny. As long as I can manage to keep my act together, that should also come out this month. See you then.

Three Vampire Weekend Available In Audio Now!

It took a while for them to finally approve it, but it's here! Three Vampire Weekend is now available on audio at Audible.com. Check it out!

I had to make a new cover so that it was square, like it has to be for audio, so this one gets one more vampire added, to go along with Thor, the cat, and the missionary vampire. This guy is the farmer vampire from "Servants of the Master."

Making covers is always fun, so I can't complain. I hope y'all like the audiobook. I worked really hard on it last month and managed to get all of "The Elephant in the Room" done on time. Then, of course, Audible took almost two weeks to approve the book. So, it's only available now. But check it out and enjoy. I hope you love it.

Again, find it on Audible. I think, if you use my link, then I get a bonus if you start a new membership. So, if that's your plan, click that link. Oh, here's one for the UK: Audible link for UK and here's one for Australia: Audible link for Australia and here's one for Canada: Audible link for Canada. Sorry, Gino, they don't make one for New Zealand. Do they not do Audible out there? I can do one for Germany or France, which seems kind of weird, since the book's in English, but whatever. I guess you could use it to help you learn to speak English better, right? Try to listen and then repeat or something...

Wizards and Angels Now Available In eBook!

New short story collection available now! It's Wizards and Angels: The Short Fiction Collection, Volume Four.

This will be my last short story collection for a while. I've used up all my short stuff, and it's pretty much all available and out there now. From here on out, I'll have to start publishing my novels. 

This one has a really good mix of stuff. It includes nine stories: From Another World, The Shortest Ghost Story Ever Told, Undo, Unfortunate, Dr. Claw, Pre-owned, Long-Term Memory, Black Angel, and Digital Wizards. A few of those are from many moons ago, such as "The Shortest Ghost Story Ever Told" or "Black Angel" and some of them are from this very year such as "Pre-Owned" or "Digital Wizards." "Digital Wizards" is a novella, and takes up the lion's share of the page count. Rather than describe each story separately, I just linked to the post where I released them in their standalone versions.

So far, Wizards and Angels is only available as an eBook on Amazon. My next order of business is to get the other formats ready for publishing. The paperback and hardcover will certainly be next, and over the next two months I will get the audio recorded and edited. So, depending on what your favorite format is, you can get it now or expect it to be a long shortly. I'll do a post when each format comes online as well so you won't miss it, don't worry. I hope you enjoy.

Digital Wizards Is Now Available!

I have a new story available on Amazon! It's a story I finished this year, just back in April, called "Digital Wizards."

I'm trying to achieve the goal I set for myself in September. I was supposed to publish three stories, but I only managed to get one of them done. Earlier this week, I published the second one, and here is the third! That's last month's goals achieved...let's see, how much time do I have to get this month's goals done? Oh, not much...

Anyway, here it is. "Digital Wizards" is a novella-length story. It's the tale of Keith, an angel investor for Silicon Valley startups. An old friend comes to him with the opportunity to get in on the ground floor of an AI image generator. He jumps at the chance, despite his friend's untrustworthy nature, because the images it creates are so amazing. As they're getting the AI image generator ready for launch, Keith plays with the software at home. He becomes completely obsessed with it, spending all his time generating every interesting image he can think of. Then, his friend calls and tells him not to use the AI image generator for a little while, because there is a problem. Except, he's so addicted that he can't manage to stay away for long. When he uses it, he gets a call from his friend begging for help. He has to embark on an adventure that he never suspected to save himself, his friend, the woman he loves, and likely the whole city too.

You can pick it up now on Amazon. It will also be on the upcoming Angels and Wizards compilation that I will be releasing soon. It's a fun story. I think you'll really enjoy it. Give it a shot. You'll be glad you did.

Pre-Owned Is Now Available!

New story available on Amazon! It's the story I wrote just back in July called "Pre-Owned."

Last month, I set the goal for myself to publish three of my stories. I only managed to get one of them done, though. So, I pushed the other two back and added them into the goal for October. Well, we're already getting to the end of October, and I still hadn't published a single one of those stories. The longer of the two, "Digital Wizards," was taking me a long time to get through. So, this week, I decided I would jump over "Digital Wizards" and just do the next story in line. It was shorter. I could come back and finish "Digital Wizards" later.

So, here it is. "Pre-Owned" is the story of Clint. He needs to get rid of his car. It's so boring and beige that every time his girlfriend sees him drive up in it, her libido drops through the floor. He's been saving up, and as long as he gets a good price for his old Mercury Sable, he can turn around and buy a Ford Mustang to take its place. The problem is, when the first person comes to take a test drive of the car, they come back drenched in sweat and filled with fear. They jump out of his car and run as fast as they can to get away. Then it happens again. What's going on? Is something wrong with his car? Could it be haunted?

You can pick it up now on Amazon. It will also be on the upcoming Angels and Wizards compilation that I will be releasing soon. It's a fun story. I think you'll really enjoy it. Give it a shot. You'll be glad you did.

My First Patreon Address Available Just This Once On The Regular Anklecast Feed

Okay, everybody, my first Patreon Address is now available to all...but just this once.

It's my first time doing a Patreon Address. Rish Outfield and Marshal Latham have been doing them for a while and I thought I ought to take their example and make a Patreon Address as well. In this, I talk about my goals for the year, month, and even day that I have set for myself, and how well I have achieved them. If that kind of stuff interests you, then check it out and see how it's going.

This one will be on the regular feed, because I want people who don't subscribe to Patreon will know that it exists, but from here on out, this will be a total Patreon exclusive. So, subscribe to the Patreon group and keep getting access to this podcast.

In the future, there will be more Patreon exclusive content. So, don't miss your chance to get it.

As always, thanks to Kevin McCleod at incompetech.com for the music.

So, you can find the episode on The Anklecast feed or you can download it by right-cllcking HERE. You could also just click the play button below. That'll work too.

My First Patreon Address

I just put up my first Patreon Address over on Patreon.

It's my first time doing this. Rish Outfield and Marshal Latham have been doing them for a while and I thought I ought to take their example and make a Patreon Address as well. In this, I talk about my goals for the year, month, and even day that I have set for myself, and how well I have achieved them. If that kind of stuff interests you, then check it out and see how it's going.

I'll put this first one onto the normal feed in a week so that people who don't subscribe to Patreon will know that it exists, but next time around, this will be a total Patreon exclusive.

As always, thanks to Kevin McCleod at incompetech.com for the music.

Check it out over on Patron!

To go along with it, I figure I ought to post my charts for the last month to give you a visual guide that you can follow along with while listening, if you want to. Here's my September writing totals:

 

Here's the total for the year to date:

Here's the charts for the year to date...I suspect you'll have to zoom in on those to see what anything on them says, but then again, maybe your eyes aren't as bad as mine have become in the last few years.

Maybe those pics were unnecessary, but I figured I'd include them if for nothing else than that I like to have records of everything on the blog for my future curiosity. Every now and then I like to go back and refresh my memory about when and how these things improved and so forth.

Doing Battle Again

I've been doing battle with lawn crews and their roaring leaf-blowers and weed-eaters recently. The other day, I had big plans to record stories all morning long, and make tons of progress on the audiobook of Three Vampire Weekend. Guess what happened.

That's right, 17 minutes and 42 seconds after I started recording, a lawn crew pulled up and cranked on their leaf blowers. They went on for at least an hour. I think they must have been servicing the lawns of three different neighbors at once. I had to twiddle my thumbs for a while, and I got a lot less done that I hoped I would.

I did get one whole story narrated, though. "Onward, to the Breech" is done. That's something. Still a lot more to go, though.

A few days later, I was back at it. I had to record a bunch of retakes, because, when I was recording "That Damned Cat" before, I was up too close to the mic, and my plosives punched through the pop filter leaving ungly thumping sounds in the audio.

I finished those up, and started into the last part of "The Frayed Ends of Sanity". I only have chapters 8, 9, and 10 left to go, and then I can start into "The Elephant in the Room" which is about half the word count of the book, so even though it's the last story, I'm nowhere near almost done, unfortunately.

I narrated about three paragraphs, when suddenly a f@#$ing leaf blower started roaring again. 

I sighed, realizing that, even though I'd only just begun, I was going to have to stop for now and take it back up later.

I went to click stop on the recording I was making and save what little I had, when something weird happened. The counter on the record time started up when I clicked the stop button. Wait a minute. What was going on? Oops! I realized that I'd gotten prepared to start recording those chapters in "The Frayed Ends of Sanity" but I'd never pushed the record button. The paragraphs that I'd narrated for the last couple of minutes had simply been for fun...for practice. I wasn't rolling on them.

In fact, the f#$%ing leaf-blower had saved me. I would have kept going all the way to the end of the story and through the author's note before realizing that I wasn't recording if it wasn't for the leaf-blower guy.

I guess, nothing can be all bad...not even a f#$@ing leaf-blower.

New Story, "Black Angel" Now Available

This is a story that I've never shared anywhere before. It's never been available in any way. It comes from many years ago, from the second time that Rish and I did a Broken Mirror event together. The premise on this was, "A person is given a revenge crystal, only to discover that it works all too well..."

I think the story that came out of it is pretty good. I really like it, and I think you will too. Or, to put it another way, YOU NEED THIS STORY IN YOUR LIFE!!! Or at least, you'll enjoy having the story in your life. It'll entertain you for the time it takes to read it. In fact, you should head over to Amazon right now and grab it. It's available for the low, low price...I mean, it's as low as Amazon will allow, because I want y'all to give it a go...of $2.99. Check it out.

Working On The Goals

The last time I talked about how my break was over and it was time to get back to work on my goals, I mentioned that I'd written a bunch of them out, but needed to go through and plan them so that they weren't just pie-in-the-sky ideas. Most of the goals were big ones like "get all my stuff published on audio". That's the overarching goal, but to achieve it, I needed to break it down into smaller chunks. So, I sat down and started working on that.

I figured I'd share that with you here, and if you have any suggestions or comments, I'd love to hear them. Maybe I could change things according to your suggestions if they seem better than my own plan (which probably couldn't be too hard. I'm not really a planner. This whole thing is kind of new to me).

Goal 1:

Publish everything by Oct 2025:

Sep: Black Angel
Sep: Digital Wizards
Sep: Pre-owned
Oct: Angels and Wizards Collection
Oct: Sunny and Gray 1
Nov: Sunny and Gray 2
Dec: The Gauntlet
Jan: A Fire in the Center of a Million Universes
Feb: Caught Up In Christmas
Mar: Irresistible Invader
Apr: Lazerfist

From what I understand, the most important thing for an author is to have a bunch of things for people to buy. That way, if they read one of your books and like it, they can then go to your catalog and buy a second one. Then a third, and so on. So, goal one is to get all of my stuff published this year. I put Oct 2025 as the finish line, but scheduled everything to come sooner. I think I can probably hit those numbers, but I may be wildly off. I don't know. Some of the books are basically ready to go, others will need some rewriting before they are ready. So, we'll see how feasible this time line is. Getting all the formats, from eBook to paperback to hardcover might be a little much in that time frame.

Goal 2:

Do Audio for everything by Dec 31, 2025

Sep-Oct: Three Vampire Weekend
Nov-Dec: Angels and Wizards
Jan-Feb: Sunny and Gray 1
Mar-Apr: Sunny and Gray 2
May-Jun: The Gauntlet
Jul-Aug: A Fire in the Center of a Million Universes
Sep-Oct: Caught Up In Christmas
Nov-Dec: Irresistible Invader
Jan-Feb: Lazerfist

This is a sort of extension of the last goal. I want to publish everything. Doing the print versions is one thing, but doing the audio is very much another thing. It involves a whole different work pattern, so I made it it's own goal. Not only that, but it's probably going to take longer than just creating the eBooks and paperbacks, etc.

I suspect that I'm going to have to make a calendar with the hours of the day assigned out to what task I will be working on. Every Tuesday at 8:30 AM, I'll record for an hour, and then at 9:30 AM I'll work on the print book, then at 10:30 AM I'll write or something like that. That's the next step in my planning. Once I've got these goals completely hammered out, I have to take my free time and piece meal it out toward achieving the goals.

Goal 3:

Write Daily

This is kind of a two part thing. First of all, I'm going to switch over from measuring my year in birthday to birthday years to regular calendar years. No more of the October to October reckoning. It's goofy and confusing. I'm the only one who can follow along. I'll stop that now and switch to regular calendar years. So, my writing goal for this birthday to birthday year was 304,475. I hit that back in June. I'm beyond that now. I'm up to 326,447 on year now. And, as we continue through to my birthday, that will continue to increase. If I get about 30,000 words per month, then it will be somewhere around 380,000 in the end.

My word count for 2024 so far is 261,488. I want to outdo my birthday to birthday year's word count with my 2024 word count. I can't make a concrete goal, though, because the birthday to birthday year isn't over yet. I've got four months left in the year in 2024 instead of just two in the birthday to birthday year...but two of the months are the same months as the birthday to birthday year gets, so the only real difference is November and December.

So, as I said, I suspect that my birthday to birthday year will be 380,000 words. Meaning that I have to eclipse that with my calendar year goal. I'm going to shoot for around 40,000 words per month in November and December. If I mange that, I should be right around 400,000 words for 2024.

Then my next goal is to beat that total in 2025.

So, let me list them out:

Birthday to birthday year goal of 380,000
2024 goal of 400,000
2025 goal of 400,000+

I'll come back and make more specific numbers for the goal once I find out how October finishes out.

How do I accomplish these lofty goals? Well, I made a little word per day chart of what I will be shooting for over the next year and change. Here's what I've got:

Oct: Write 1,000 daily
Nov: Write 1,000 daily
Dec: Write 1,250 daily
Jan: Write 1,250 daily
Feb: Write 1,500 daily
Mar: Write 1,500 daily
Apr: Write 1,750 daily
May: Write 1,750 daily
Jun: Write 2,000 daily
Jul: Write 2,000 daily
Aug: Write 2,000 daily
Sep: Write 2,000 daily
Oct: Write 2,000 daily
Nov: Write 2,000 daily
Dec: Write 2,000 daily

That's a pretty intense thing to be shooting for, really. I've almost never written 2,000 words in a day. I've done it maybe five times ever. I want to get to that level, however, and it seems like the best way is to build up with a slow increase every month until I'm there. Hopefully, it'll be kind of like weight lifting. You lift ten pounds every day, and in a while, that seems easy, so you take it up to fifteen...and so on and so on until you're lifting more than a hundred pounds.

Those are all of the very specific goals, I think. The rest are more one time things. Here are a few of those:

Construct a website for BD Anklevich with a store to buy eBooks, signed paper books, etc.
Get an email list going on the website and start a monthly newsletter.
Do some advertising with the money that I make from the podcast and the sales of books.
Get a group of first readers.
Plug myself on the podcast monthly, and ask for reviews as well.
Get the podcast on all the big podcast platforms to increase the audience
Republish the old Dunesteef episodes with my stories on the Anklecast

And maybe there should be others. I was thinking of trying to hit up Abbie Hilton and ask her what she thought I ought to work on as I continue trying to build this stuff up. What should a beginning writer be putting his effort into? What will be worth my time and what is a waste of time?

Many of those goals there involve me figuring out just what the best way to do things is. How do I make my website? What email service to I use for my mailing list? How do I get my podcast listed on Spotify? How do I get it on Google Podcasts...or whatever they're called now? Things I've got to investigate and work out. That will be the process to achieving those goals. I don't even know what they are yet, so I can't make itemized to-do lists with those goals. But I will set aside time to work toward them as well this year.

So, there you have it. That's what I'm working toward by the end of 2025. What do you think? Is there something I missed? Should I add something to the list? Is something that I'm trying to do a complete waste of time? Let me know what you think.

A Story I Haven't Published Until Now

I just put a story up on Amazon for y'all to purchase. Up until now, I have been a little afraid to publish it. It's probably one of the darkest stories I've ever written. It's called Undo.

It's about a high school kid who gets a mysterious stopwatch that can jump time backward a minute whenever he pushes the button. What could he do with that? Well, as I said before, the story is possibly the darkest I've ever written. You could probably call this the origin story for a supervillain. In fact, I did consider using this character as an enemy that would face The Gauntlet in one of the books in the series. Maybe I still will. Since I've only written the first book, there's plenty of time for that.

Just know this, I do not advocate for nor do I condone any of the things the character does in this story. I was afraid to release the story because of what readers might think of me. I'd like to think that our readers would never confuse the opinions or actions of a writer's characters with the opinions or actions of a writer, but sometimes it happens. So, I'm putting out this disavowal preemptively.

Alright, check out Undo over on Amazon for the low, low price of $3.99. It's 15,000 words long, so you get your money's worth. Enjoy.

Audio Available

It's the culmination of all that effort from last month. I got an email on Tuesday from Audible/Amazon telling me that they have accepted my files for my audiobook version of A Battalion of Ideas: The Short Fiction Collection, Volume Two. 

All told, it's nine hours and twenty-nine minutes of short story goodness. Check it out and get yourself a copy if you'd like...don't worry, I don't expect you to. I just say this because I'm supposed to. It's in the script.