I have probably unreasonable and hugely ambitious goals for 2012. Therefore, I will keep them to myself except to say this:

I’m hoping to get a lot written. I’m hoping to maintain an optimistically assertive attitude. These two things go together.

Here’s the administrative part of the post:

The ARC giveaway for Melanie Rawn’s forthcoming novel, Touchstone, was won by Heather S. Email me, Heather!

Now, for the kvelling portion of the post:

My daughter made a short story sale last year to Arcane, an anthology edited by Nathan Shumate and published by Cold Fusion Media. On the site the anthology is described as “thirty macabre, unsettling and weird tales to tickle that spot behind your eyes you just can’t reach.”

Arcane is now available in print and ebook editions.

Besides being a writer she’s also an artist (finishing her BFA this year at Portland State University). She has work in this non-profit fund-raising calendar for dance group BodyVox, about which she says:

The annual BodyVox dance company fundraiser calendar is on sale now, which I mention because I have a piece of art in it! It’s a cool concept, where they have artists modify photographs of the dancers in the company into fantastical hybrid art pieces. The calendar can only be ordered online through a slightly arcane system but is on their website

On Dec 20, 2011 I posted a survey via the new “question and answer tool” Urtak, a means to do a fairly simple survey via Yes/No questions.

I got over 1000 responses, which means over 100 people who answered. Mostly I found fairly universal agreement with my basic questions, all of which were relevant to what people might want (or not want) to see on my blog in 2012. Respondents liked posts that offered scope for discussion, felt it was okay for me to post links to reviews or to do some promotional content on my blog, and were interested in posts on world building, my work in general/specific, and (slightly less so, interestingly) in reviews of books/film and pop culture.

I got closer to a 50/50 split on the question of whether people wanted me to talk about politics, so I think I will stick with my longstanding general avoidance of politics as a blog topic. It’s not that I’m not politically engaged or that I don’t have strong opinions; I do. I’m not particularly interested in political wrangling on my front porch, and in the sense that I consider Twitter the water cooler of my work life, I consider my blog my front porch.

I’m probably a bit more political on Twitter than I am here (and by extension Facebook, to which all my Twitter posts autofeed). In general, though, brought up in rural/small town Oregon and in an ethnic household with an immigrant mother, I learned early that you didn’t discuss politics or religion in general company. I’m not at all against people discussing politics or religion in general company, I should add. I myself quite enjoy reading political content. I’m just saying that, on the whole, I’m not going to do it here very often.

I do plan to do future Urtak surveys, but they won’t be about the blog. I may come up with a set of questions about reading likes and dislikes, or some such, something that combines being serious and fun.

One of the interesting aspects of the Urtak tool is that respondents can add questions.

A question was asked:
Do you plan on uploading extra stories about your various existing series’ to your website?

I’ll answer it here:

I have added the Cold Fire Bonus Chapter 31/5 on the Extras page.

I have also added the story featuring Rory, To Be A Man, on the Extras page.

I don’t have any other stories written within my existing series, because I am not really a short story writer. In fact, I have written three times more novels than short stories. I am thinking of trying to write more short stories this year (I have a couple more in the Spiritwalker universe I would like to tell, from the point of view of characters other than Cat, like the two above). If I do that, however, I will likely offer them in ebook form and charge a (modest) amount (depending on length, probably $0.99 or $1.99): a woman’s got to eat and pay for her outrigger canoe paddling obsession. I do plan to write more about my various worlds here, and in some cases I may post additional material or, in some cases, cut material.

So we will see what 2012 brings. One really never knows.

Happy New Year!