How did I do with my goals this year?

So these are the goals I set myself this year and I'm delighted to say that I have achieved the vast majority and therefore consider it a win!

Goals for 2025 Set and achieve target for Goodreads Reading Challenge: 33 books ✅ Read and review Cold Grave, which has been on my Netgalley shelf since April 2022 ✅ Read the 10 books on my 2019-DecTheShelves shelf ❎ Read 10 books from my short stories shelf ✅ Take part in 10 blog tours ✅ Read 2 books that I've won in giveaways ✅ Take part in Reading Challenges to encourage me to read 33 books this year: 20 Books of Summer Reading Challenge which runs 1st June to 1st September ✅ Audiobook Challenge. ❎

I managed to read 51 books including Cold Grave, and ticked off 10 short stories during the #20BooksOfSummer2025 challenge. I also took part in 40 blogtours - 18 review blog tours and 22 content or promotional blog tours.

Whilst the aim was to read 10 books on my 2019-DecTheShelves shelf, I only managed to read 2.

I didn't listen to any audiobooks this year and therefore did not take part in the Audiobook challenge. I did, however, take part in the #20BooksOfSummer2025 and managed to read 20 books. The aim of participating in these challenges is to help me to accomplish my overall reading goals - which I almost have.

Thinking about what is achievable in the coming year I have set myself the following:

Goals for 2026 Set and achieve target for Goodreads Reading Challenge: 35 books Take part in 10 review blog tours Read 2 books on my 2019-DecTheShelves shelf Read 2 books that I've won in giveaways Read 2 books on my Instafreebie (now Prolific Works) shelf Read 2 books on my Smashwords shelf Read 10 short stories Take part in Reading Challenges to encourage me to read 35 books this year: 20 Books of Summer Reading Challenge - which runs 1st June to 1st September Beat The Backlist Challenge Write 2 more sections in my family history Continue to support Indie Authors

I have been writing my family history story for a few years but added nothing last year as my focus was on reading, reviewing and taking part in blog tours. My intention has always been to produce a book of my memories and any oral history that holds water for my grandchildren. I love looking at what I've already written as it makes me smile remembering all the colourful characters I have known. I thought I'd add this to my goals to ensure I do take time to add a bit more to this story.

I begin this year with three blog tour reads, Jenny O'Brien's The Resistance Knitting Club, The Silent Resistance by Anna Normann and Maggie Christensen's Something in the Air in Pelican Crossing. Keeping my blog tour participation down to 10 review tours is not going to be easy, methinks!

Good luck with your own reading goals and Happy New Year to you all!

Happy New Year everyone!

Today I'm setting my reading goals for this year. I am erring on the side of caution as I have a number of commitments which reduce the amount of time I have available to read and review books.

Goals for 2025 Set target for Goodreads Reading Challenge: 33 books Read and review Cold Grave, which has been on my Netgalley shelf since April 2022 Read the 10 books on my 2019-DecTheShelves shelf - again these have waited too long waiting to be read Read 10 books from my short stories shelf Take part in 10 blog tours Read 2 books that I've won in giveaways Take part in Reading Challenges to encourage me to read 33 books this year: 20 Books of Summer Reading Challenge which runs 1st June to 1st September Audiobook Challenge. Again this runs 1st January to 31st December

Will you join me and take part in some of the reading challenges?

Meantime, Happy New Year, and thank you for reading my blog.

2021, Here We Come!

Happy New Year
2021

End of a Decade and my 2020 Goals

This time last year, I set myself what I considered to be five achievable goals, and once again I have failed dismally.

Goals 1 and 2, concerning my wip, were abandoned. No work has been done on that story this year.

Goal 3 - Read and review 30 books faired better. According to my Goodreads log, I have read 65 books this year. That's great you say. However, I stipulated that I would:

1. Read the seven books I bought for the #DecTheShelves challenge 2017 - I managed just one!
2. Restrict myself to twelve blog tours - Epic Fail. I took part in 41 tours. 
3. Read eleven books from my TBR pile - nearly there - I read nine books from that list.

Goal 4 - Write 4 short stories - another epic fail.

Goal 5 - Create a game, meme, or feature for my blog - not really a success. Although I hosted #DecTheShelves 2019 in December, it wasn't of my creation, so I'll give myself a half-tick for that goal.

This year I have a number of outside influences which will impact the number of books I will be able to read and my writing - including blogging.

With this in mind, I have set less goals for 2019.

Goals 2020 1. Read and review 30 books               Target set for Goodreads Reading Challenge: 45 books               Restrict blog tours to 6 books.               Read the 6 books on my Netgalley shelf.               Read the 23 books I bought for myself during #DecTheShelves 2019               Read 10 book club books 2. Create a game, meme or regular feature for my blog                 I am looking into setting up a reading challenge later in the year 3. Write a short story                   4. Support other Indie Authors

I am determined not to take on too much this year because I already know that I will have a lot less time for my reading and writing in the coming months.

Let's see how it goes next year...

Meantime, Happy New Year, and thank you for reading my blog.

Welcoming in 2019 and Making New Year's Resolutions

So let me start by wishing you all a Happy New Year! 

With the benefit of hindsight, I have considered carefully my New Year's Resolutions and goals for 2019, having failed dismally to achieve any of those set this year.

2018 - What's next?

I would like to start by wishing you all a very happy, healthy and prosperous 2018!

With only hours to go before we bring in the New Year, I've started to list my goals for the next 12 months. Nothing like a deadline to galvanise me into action!

So what exactly do I want to accomplish, and more importantly, how am I going to achieve those goals?

1. Complete current story ~~ I have started to write a story, which at the moment is titled 'The Legacy'. The whole story is noted down in bullet points, and I have written a lot of the background information.  In my head, I just need a few days without interruption to type the whole story currently swirling around in my brain, but in reality, interruptions are inevitable and the background is proving harder to write than I expected. I shall set a deadline of 31st March to have the first draft ready.


2. Publish ~~ Aim to publish by 30th September. This might be a difficult deadline to achieve as I am dependent on input from my pre-readers, and my proof-reader having the time to go through my work with a fine tooth-comb.


3. Read and Review ~~ During the #DecTheShelves challenge I added 25 books written by indie authors to my reading material. I aim to read and review on Amazon and Goodreads, all 25 by 31st December 2018.


4. Promote myself and my new book ~~ For this I think I need to increase my social media presence. Taking part in the challenges set by other indie authors this year has been a useful way of encouraging inspiration, and also raises my profile as an author. Perhaps I should create my own writing game to share with others as well as contributing to the writing challenges on Twitter. My Facebook page is under utilised, and I also want to improve the layout and readability of my blog. Looking at other authors' blogs and websites, I can see they make more use of images to personalise their pages than I have so far.


5. Attempt to write something in a different genre ~~ I enjoy reading a good romance, but for the life of me, I cannot write romance. I have toyed with the idea of writing a ghost story, but not a horror story. I think sci-fi is out because, even though I enjoy watching several sci-fi series on TV, I don't read sci-fi and doubt I could put together a decent plot. That said, I have often wondered about writing something around time travel - that might be achievable as a short story rather than a novel. Anyway, the goal is to write something out of my comfort zone.

I think I have set myself enough challenges for now, and as life returns to normal the day after tomorrow, I hope to be able to start attacking those goals.