The beginning of a new year is always a good time to look forward and make resolutions (yech!), or plans (better), or at least goals (OK, I can live with that) for the year ahead. So, in the spirit of "if I say it, I'm committed," here goes...
Personal Goals
1) Rehab my new knee -- I had my left knee replaced back in October 2019. Unfortunately, they forgot to put in the powered cyborg enhancements I had asked for, leaving me with just my own old and worn out muscles, ligaments, and tendons. My goal is short-term, namely be ready to golf in April.
2) Visit our daughter Carly -- Carly graduated college in May 2019 and went out into the world on her own, about as far away from us as possible! She is now teaching English in South Korea. Nervousness about their neighbor to the North aside, my wife Ona and I are incredibly proud of her. She set her goals: completing the necessary training last summer; landing a teaching position; moving half-way across the world; learning Korean; being a successful teacher; and living independently, and fulfilled them all! Our goal is to visit her late Spring or early Summer.
3) Get my son off the payroll -- This one extends into 2021, namely to get my son, Wes, through college and out into the world as his sister, Carly, has already done (see above). Wes is a fantastic musician (check out his website www.wesjohnsonmusic.net). He's doing great at school (Berklee College of Music in Boston), but the music business is incredibly hard to break into. My goal for 2020 is to help him get his first all-original album published and promoted.
Writing Goals
4) Launch Lady 355 - Mother of Freedom February 7, 2020! Lady is the second book in The Enclave Series, The Templar Lance being the first, and will be generally available for Kindle and a paperback edition, but you can pre-order the ebook now. Everything is a "go" for the launch, so stay tuned for updates.
5) Finish and publish Shroud of Doubt, the third book in The Enclave Series. Shroud will complete the first three-book cycle in the series with a thought-provoking tale that is likely to make some folks uncomfortable -- exactly what a writer like me wants.
6) Attend a writing conference -- I participated in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) back in November and met a lot of great fellow writers, both virtually and in the real world. It was a great experience, which led me to join the Fiction Writers Group on Facebook. Again, interacting with other writers and having the opportunity to read their stuff and have them read mine is invigorating. My goal is to extend that interaction into the real world at some writing/industry conference that fits into my calendar and budget.
7) Looking farther out, I'm starting to think about the next cycle in The Enclave universe, but I will probably deviate from the Historical Fiction genre and get back into my first love, SF.
So, that's probably more goals than are reasonable for 2020, but "a man's reach should exceed his grasp" as Robert Browning once said.
Stay tuned to this blog for updates, and feel free to comment on and/or share what you like (or don't like).
Rob Johnson
January 2020