publishing goals | Stephanie Flint

At the beginning of the 2021 year I created a tentative goals list for the year. A very tentative goals list.

(As in… a lot of things changed).

But now that the year’s almost over, I thought it might be interesting to take a look and see what happened, what didn’t, and what slipped in that wasn’t planned. 🙂

What’s in red is the original plan…

What’s in black is what actually happened:

* * *

Distant Horizon Universe

Release Distant Horizon #3 (Starless Night)

This one is on pre-order for late October. Still needs revisions, but the rough draft is written. (Full length novel)

–> We released Starless Night in November. Though delayed, the ebook was completed! 😀

Finish rough draft of Distant Horizon #4 (Changing Tides)

I’m currently halfway through the rough draft (full length novel), though it will likely need fairly major revisions to update the timeline after book three.

–> Scrapped the aforementioned draft of Changing Tides due to changes in Starless Night, and wrote a new 50,000 words. This draft is not yet complete.

Release books #2-5 of Galina’s Saga (Deceived)

The rough draft of all four unpublished books (ranging between 20k to 50k words in length) is complete, and they’re ready for revision. The goal is to have all books completed and to rapid release them, probably a month apart from each other. If I can have these ready to go by late spring/early summer, that would be awesome. But depending on how many changes are necessary, it may be later in the year before they’re released.

–> Well… this didn’t happen. #5 needs major revisions (and there might be a #6, not sure yet?). Isaac did get a chance to read through #2-4 and leave notes.

Unplanned Additions

–> We started releasing a themed image for each newsletter, so we’ve managed to build a mini back-catalogue of themed images.

The Wishing Blade Universe

Write rough drafts for books #4 and #5 of The Wishing Blade series.

Had a couple false starts with book four, so I’ll probably start that one again from scratch. I expect these both to be full length novels.

–> *Attempts to whistle sheepishly before realizing she’s not particularly good at whistling.*

Um… no progress made here.

Release The Wind Mage and the Wolf

Currently revising this one for release in late February. (Around 30,000 words)

–> The Wind Mage and the Wolf was published in February. 😀

Release Legends of Cirena #8 and #9

Book eight needs revisions, and book nine needs it’s rough draft completed. Also, I need to determine where this series is going to go following book nine. (I think these are both around 30,000 words?)

–> The Trial of Bells and Blood (LoC #8) was released in July. 😀

–> LoC #9 (The Dark Forest of Aneth) was named and a cover concept started, but the rough draft still needs completed.

Unplanned Additions

–> We started releasing a themed image for each newsletter. Since it’s a monthly newsletter, not a whole lot of images have been made yet, but the catalogue is slowly growing.

–> I’ve begun outlining what comes next in the Legends of Cirena era. My hope is that ironing out those details will help solidify a few details meant to appear in the last couple Wishing Blade books, as well as helping determine how The Dark Forest of Aneth should end.

Huntress Universe

Release Book #3 of the Huntress series.

The rough draft is currently halfway written. (I’m expecting it to be a short novel). Though I’m currently planning to initially release book three in Kindle Unlimited, like the previous two books, ultimately, I want to take this series wide.

–> No progress on Huntress #3, though I did take the series wide.

Space Adventure Comic

Finish a complete episode.

Since comics are new to us, I expect quite a few hiccups along the way. Still, with Isaac making progress on organizing scenes, I’m hoping we can have the first episode complete by the end of June.

–> So… we haven’t completed a finished episode. We did storyboard it, and Isaac made a lot of progress on character creation and even scene creation/organization, but rendering those images and putting them together on a page hasn’t happened yet.

Unplanned Additions

–> I started working on my Villain Problems comic, which does have a few renders complete and a couple pages roughly drafted. This is a for-fun project.

–> Isaac started work on another comic idea and has several scenes in place, which still needs polished and rendered. This is a for-fun project.

Daz PA

Release a product a month… or at least 12 products before the end of the year.

I’d like to get at least one product out each month, or the equivalent (since sometimes products don’t come out when expected. I already have a few planned (some even partially completed) that could work for the first few months. I’d also like to better learn Hexagon and Substance Painter, that way I can start creating outfits.

–> I ran into a few hang-ups that slowed me down on these projects. Switching a couple in-progress projects from Genesis 8 to Genesis 8.1, redoing part of a project to make the characters look more realistic and improve promos, and learning how to use Hexagon for modeling props (Taiko and Snowball Fight). Still, I ended up with a total of 9 completed projects (one of those being a collaboration). Not quite one a month, but still, a pretty good number of releases.

January – Hearing Aid Poses and Expressions for Genesis 8 and 8.1

March – SBibb Charismatic Bard Poses and Expressions for Torment 8.1

April – SBibb Diverse World Morphs for 200 Plus for Genesis 8 Male

July – SBibb Cursed Merman Poses and Expressions for Zale 8.1; SBibb Seafarer Expressions for Wolfgang 8.1

August – SBibb Buccaneer Expressions for Jinx Jones 8.1; SBibb Taiko Props and Poses for Genesis 8 and 8.1

October – SBibb Diverse World Vol 2 for 200 Plus for Genesis 8 Female

December – SBibb Snowball Fight Props and Poses for Genesis 8 and 8.1

* * *

One thing I’ve decided to test changing is that last year I attempted to do a daily, hourly schedule. When it worked, it was awesome. And I loved the idea of it. Unfortunately, it was difficult to stick to, and eventually got entirely tossed out the window because of trying to also work around Isaac’s school schedule.

So, for 2022, I’m testing a new method. This version involves marking a calendar with deadlines for when I’d like to have things done, but without saying it needs to be done on a specific day. More like monthly goals, broken down into easier to manage chunks. Plus, I’ve set myself a goal of writing/editing 50,000 words a month. Anything beyond that is tracked to the next month, that way if I have a month that I know might be hectic, I still have a chance to get ahead.

There may be a few things I’ve missed in this round-up, and for monthly progress I have the Infinitas Publishing Status Reports.

Now I just need to create a round-up of goals for 2022. 🙂

Though I typically do a monthly status report for Infinitas Publishing, I thought it might be useful to take a look at overall goals for the coming year.

Now, a lot of this is really tentative.

Really tentative.

Plans may change or projects may get sidelined. There’s also several other projects that may get worked on, but here I’ll focus on the primary projects.