It’s a yearly tradition for me to lay out my goals for the year ahead just before New Years Eve, and then almost a year later, refer to each goal and see how well I did!

So, here are the 8 goals I set myself for 2023 and the results.

1. Start releasing ‘The Day The Earth Turned’ series – Achieved! As planned I released book 1: Summer in June, and book 2: Autumn in October. Book 3: Winter is all set up and ready to be released in January, hopefully followed by book 4: Spring in March or April.
2. Finish ‘At Night They Played In The Road’ (working title, I still can’t quite decide) and send to editor – Achieved! In fact, I recently received the edits from my wonderful editor and will start working on them very soon. I hope to release it around June 2024.
3. Publish ‘Days End’, the third book in the Fortune’s Well trilogy – Achieved! The whole trilogy is now published and available in ebook, paperback and hardback!
4. Keep adding to my new short story and poetry collection – Achieved! I haven’t added a lot and this collection is nowhere near ready for publication but I have managed to add a few new poems to it this year.
5. Launch Chasing Driftwood Books – Achieved! (Sort of) While we are not ready for any kind of official launch, Chasing Driftwood Books is a thing in motion. There are now eight authors in our indie collective and we are currently taking part in a Christmas calendar countdown together. The website is in progress and our mission is clear. Hopefully this time next year we will have fully launched!
6. Keep improving my vegetable plot and self-sufficiency in general – Failed! Well, mostly. Unfortunately, my vegetable plot ended up being very neglected this year, despite my good intentions. I have realised and accepted that I just don’t have time for it. I made the decision to take down the fence and start clearing it all away at the end of the season. I felt too sad looking at it. I’m not giving up entirely and I still plan to grow things out there. I am just going to be a bit more realistic about what I have time for.
7. Keep Up with dog training –Achieved! I had no choice, really. A year ago Ada was a sweet little puppy who was only just starting to go for walks after her jabs. It soon became very obvious that she had a deeply ingrained fear and mistrust of the outside world and just about everything in it! Her reactivity as a puppy was absolutely terrible and I was truly stunned, wondering what on earth I had done wrong. We have done constant training since then, at home, on all our walks and with our wonderful dog trainer. She has been enjoying Hoopers, Trick Training and more recently Future Stars which is teaching her the basics for agility later on. She adores training. She is desperate to learn and please you; she just finds a lot of things very worrying. She is a lot less reactive now, thankfully. She generally won’t react anymore to previous triggers, such as cars, bikes, motorbikes, scooters, children, buggies, men in hi-vis jackets, men in helmets… It was a lot! Now it is mostly just other dogs and not all of them. Just the ones that worry her!
8. Get fitter and stronger – Failed! I haven’t gotten worse, I just wasn’t able to keep up the pilates. I’m happy with my body and my fitness but its hiking I really want to get into next year!

I think six out of eight is not too bad and the two I didn’t achieve were not total fails. All in all it has been a good year in terms of writing and family life. Look out for next week’s post where I will set out my goals for 2024!