2016: A Writing Rearview Review

And that’s a wrap on 2016, some might say mercifully so. As for how 2016 treated me and my writing career, I would rate the year as “not too shabby.”

Let us now turn to a whole bunch of stats because they are the super-duperest, most fun thing ever. Full disclosure: I love stats. It’s a personal failing, I know.

Fantasy/Horror/Sci-Fi Submissions

Total Submissions Sent: 54*

Better than last year but not nearly as many as I would have liked. The biggest reason I didn’t get as many short story submission out there is pretty easy to figure. I was writing novels for a lot of the year, the first of which was published in 2016. That ate a lot of writing time with, uh, more writing. Anyway, not too bad.

Acceptances: 9

Okay, this is a better number, and it’s almost double what I did last year. I also increased my acceptance ration from 13% to 17%, a number I hope to raise even further in 2017.

Form Rejections: 29

I actually received more form rejection than last year, but since I primarily submitted to top-tier markets in 2016, that’s not too bad. In addition, I received a number of higher-tier form rejections from this publications, which tells me I’m getting closer to an acceptance (I hope).

Personal Rejections: 10

About the same number of these as last year. A number of these were for stories for which I received a further consideration letter but the publisher ultimately decided to pass. Disappointing, but still a step in the right direction.

Never Responded/Withdrawn: 1

Just one of these in 2016, and it was because the publication went out of business. Disappointing because the story was short-listed. Oh, well; it’s a tough ol’ market out there for small genre zines.

*I still have five submission pending, so percentages are based on the submissions that have received a response.

Privateer Press

I still write a bunch for Privateer Press, and here’s what I did in 2016.

Novels: 1.3

I finished one novel in 2016 for Privateer Press, Acts of War: Flashpoint, which was published in July. I’m currently writing another one, Acts of War II, and I’m blogging my progress as I go along. You can see those blog posts right here.

Novellas: 1

I wrote one novella for Privateer Press that I can’t talk about yet because it’s still going through revisions. I’ll have more info on that soon.

Short Stories: 4

I wrote four short stories for Privateer Press in 2016, one of which was published in No Quarter magazine, and three others that were part of an introductory product for Privateer’s primary game lines WARMACHINE and HORDES.

Articles: 4

I also penned four articles for No Quarter Magazine, which is about par for the course. All of these were about the Iron Kingdoms setting.

Rejectomancy

Lastly, there’s this blog itself, and 2016 was my first full year of blogging. I couldn’t quite keep up with three posts per week like I had initially set out to dao, but I was routinely able to put out two posts. I learned a lot this year about the kinds of things folks like to read and the kinds of things they’re unlikely to read. One thing that will change in 2017 is the amount of self-promotional posts on the blog. I won’t go crazy, but I’ve got some big projects this year I want to talk about in addition to the usual rejectomancy stuff.

Here are the raw stats for the blog.

• Total Posts: 88
• Total Visitors: 7,816
• Total Likes: 646
• Total Comments: 470

I didn’t write that many more posts than I did in 2016, and I think I likely should have done a few more. Again, the novels ate into my writing time, but that’s not a great excuse. This year, I’d like to get those numbers up and hit at least 10k visitors.

Summary

Here’s what my total output for 2016 looked like in hard numbers. It’s less than last year for a number of reasons, but I’m not too unhappy. Like last year, I’m only counting stuff I wrote that was either published or is slated for publication.

• Words Written: 194,250
• Articles/Stories/Novels Published: 19

2017 Goals

I’m not going to go into too much detail here because my goals basically amount to write and publish more stuff. Here’s a couple of things, though.

• Write more stories, submit more stories, and get more stories accepted.
• Write three novels: two novels for Privateer Press and one novel for my agent to shop (my own IP).
• Blog more. More promotional posts and more rejectomancy/writing posts.

2016 Free-to-Read Published Stuff 

If you’d like to have a look at some of the things I published this year, here are some links to short stories you can read (or listen to) for free.

• “Night Games” – Published by Pseudopod: Pseudopod has done an audio version of my story “Night Games.”
• “Scare Tactics” – Published by The Devilfish Review: This is a quaint tale about a girl, her pet demon, and her budding parapsychology career.
• “A Man of Many Hats” – Published by The Molotov Cocktail: A weird one about, uh, hats. This one was awarded an honorable mention in The Molotov Cocktail’s Flash Phenom contest.
• “The Father of Terror” – Published by The Molotov Cocktail: Dead cats and Egyptian god-demons for the win. This story was awarded second place in The Molotov Cocktail’s Flash Icon contest.
• “Masks” – Published by The Molotov Cocktail: Children’s Halloween masks and ancient demons. A winning combo! This story was awarded third place in The Molotov Cocktail’s Flash Fear contest.

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And that, friends and colleagues, was my 2016 in the wild world of freelance writing. How was your year? Tell me about it in the comments.