52 in 2010!

Welcome, new follower Larry! He's the guy I told you about yesterday. Click on his furry face to learn more about him.

Thanks to all of you who bought a copy of Larry's and Skeet's e-book for Spider and Jeanne Robinson and to those of you who helped to spread the word. You guys are incredible! Tony is very happy with the numbers and we'll get the official total on our good works in the first Aural Delights episode of 2010, which I'm sure I'll mention all over the place.

If this link works, there might still be time to help! http://www.starshipsofa.com/shop/lord-dickenss-declaration/

In other news: Happy Old Year's Night!

2009 sucked! 2009 brought me divorce, a nosedive in my credit rating, the loss of my father and a burgled home now less one MacBook, PSP and iPod. As the wise Grant Stone says, "See ya in hell, 2009!" The shittiness took its toll on my writing. Looking back at the 2008 year in review I wanted to write 90 stories and a novel in 2009. What the fuck was I thinking? I also wanted to make 200 submissions. What I actually did was write a paltry 29 stories (many of them twit-fic and flash fiction) and made 81 submissions. Admittedly, it was one of my better years. One thing that tripped me up was a regular writing and abandoning of supposedly unfixable stories.

However some good things came out of the writing year. I finally won my years-long battle with Process Five and put his tale down in a story called Three Kingdoms. My twit-fic made its way out to people via @thaumatrope, @nanoism and @outshine. I started my own podcast, Beware the Hairy Mango (and I know some of you are asking, "Why are you writing this Matt, and not recording a new episode?"). And I wrote some stories I'm really happy with including Thank You, Mr. Goldman; A Body is for Driving and The Empire State Building Strikes Back! The soon to be happening podcast, Cossmass Infinities bought my story Fluff and Buttons on the Teddy Bear Range, so in 2010 we'll be able to hear those bears speak (maybe with Scottish accents!). I sold a few stories to Everyday Weirdness, and sold stories to Fusion Fragment and, I'm very excited to say, GUD magazine (Look for it in Issue #6). My story, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Diplomat was published by Blood, Blade and Thruster, and then almost immediately picked up for the main fiction spot by StarShipSofa's Aural Delights.

"So stop bitching!" you say. Well, bitching is my nature.

The goal for 2010 is to write 52 stories. This is doable if I can control myself. I figure I can produce 4,000 words of polished, final draft in eight hours. Double that for fucking-around time, so If I can give 16 hours a week to my short stories, I'll have it. Submissions? We'll say 200 again.

There we go. That's it for goals. Yes, I want to do a couple of other things, lose a few pounds, watch Wagner's Ring Cycle (just DVD, nothing fancy) and keep the house cleaner (Cleaner is easy. Clean is hard.), but these are all peripheral things. The writing is what merits the concerted effort.

I hope every one of you has a wondrous and happy 2010! Make it happen!