Any books that have kept you from eating, sleeping, going to work?

Mine was Josh Lanyon's Fatal Shadows. It kept me up pretty darn late last night!

Any characters you recall from stories you've read a year ago (or more) who you still remember as if you actually knew them? Mine were:

Charles Wallace from Madeleine L'Engle's A Swiftly Tilting Planet

Saint Germaine from Chelsea Quinn Yarboro' s Hotel Transylvania

Joseph from Kage Bakers' The Company Series

Do take a few minutes to jot down 20 things you like about the last book you've read, even if you didn't care for the book overall. You might be surprised at the last five items or so that you come up with, once you've written down the obvious and you really have to start reaching.

Lay some groundwork for your writing career!

Separate the things you can control vs. the things you can't when you're setting your goals. In other words, you can't force an editor to buy a story from you, but you can make sure you have a game plan in place to keep your work out there and circulating, so that if you should receive a rejection, you've got another market all lined up for the story.

Here are two of my goals for 09:

1. Find a way to increase my readership, possibly by

2. Promote new print titles more heavily