Goals for 2015.

ASUS M11Ad computer, Logitech speakers and mouse, HP printer.

Louis Shalako

Goals for 2015 would include something like the following:

Learn how to use, and optimize, my new Microsoft Office 2013 for Family and Student.

Replace image files that got pooched when the old machine crashed.

Reinstall a few doodads and doohickeys, for example Kindle for PC, Nook or Kobo for PC, etc.

So far I can’t get the Blackburn radio app to work. I don’t know much about troubleshooting that, but it is only day two with my new machine. I can listen to albums on Youtube for a while.

Write more short stories and begin a new submissions/rejections list, which we’ll start at ah…#1,023.

Because I knew the old machine was dying, I have published virtually everything on the old list except for one more story awaiting rejection or acceptance.

Essentially, my new submissions list will be all new stories—hopefully I’ll be able to write something, after all, and then there’s no worry of resubmitting something to someone who’s seen it before. That’s why we keep records in the first place. The trouble is, when the list is gone, it’s gone.

That’s not to say that watching old Betsy snap, crackle and spark there on my desk wasn’t a bit traumatic because it was…we go back a long ways, and she helped me write a half-dozen books or so, maybe more than that.

I plan to complete and publish The Conqueror, and I definitely need another book in the Inspector Gilles Maintenon mystery series. If I could publish three 60,000 + word books in 2015 that would be some kind of achievement for one such as I.

I wrote at least 400,000 words in 2014, and I would like to focus that to a finer point if I could. There is something to be said for blogging as well. But marketable stories would take priority.

Other than that, my old computer blew up, taking hundreds, possibly thousands of stories, poems, blog posts, personal photos and of course book covers. The most worrying thing is the POD files, but by downloading .doc files from Smashwords, it only takes an hour and half or so to make another. 

(The author has just downloaded a 4x7” POD file from Lulu, so that’s one less worry.)

On the plus side, I had sort of planned ahead, and had a new machine sitting right beside old Betsy. 

All it took was a pair of 7w Logitech speakers, and what the heck. I had already purchased a 23” flat-screen monitor, and a new wireless mouse. We are all set to get on with our whole new life.

My goal is to keep moving forwards, to keep writing, to keep submitting stories, to keep creating books and stories, and to continue seeking a new kind of success, an independent kind of success as a writer.

In more personal terms, I wouldn’t mind finding an incredibly quiet place to live. I’ve been using a little pocket camera, and a really good one would be nice…we all have our little wish list, don’t we?

A new car, a vacation on a desert island with a beautiful wench, a cat, a dog, and a new jean jacket, some good whiskey…it’s the stuff dreams are made of.

Other than that, we’ll be taking it one day at a time, ladies and gentlemen.

End