We’ve finished our goal planning for next year, and it’s a tall order considering I’ve returned to a day job and Mel will be moving to London in a couple months. We love writing, illustrating, and providing fun and clean content to interested readers. In no way do we want to slow down, but sometimes it can’t be helped. We’ve set lofty goals, but we’ll be taking it all in stride. Life is too short to stress over what is out of our control. We’ll work hard, accomplish what we can, and not beat ourselves up over what doesn’t get done.
As Cryptid World has developed over this last year, three distinct areas have emerged: Crptid World, Mel Cabre, and Belied Outcast Legends. To better organize our thoughts and keep us focused, we hung a white board for each division on our office closet door and labeled each with our purpose and goals.
We use this as a guideline and aren’t afraid to use those erasers on the end of the white board pens to change dates. As long as we keep moving forward and meet deadlines. That’s the real goal.
This is the umbrella for everything and what we call our organization. Goals for this area include:
- Continue publishing a weekly blog and monthly newsletter on the website.
- Maintain and regularly update the Cryptid World website.
- Develop proposal for new non-fiction book and submit to agent.
- Successfully publish and market the Bigfoot and Sky Monsters books and all this entails (many facets to this goal).
- Add store to the website this spring.
This is all Mel and her art. This year she hopes to:
- Continue posting creature designs 2-3 times a week on Instagram at Melcabre2.
- Begin a Patreon account.
- Begin illustrating on Twitch.
Belied Outcast Legends
This is our fictional book series. We call it Belied Outcast Legends because the main character in each book feel like outcast. The monsters in the story are stereotyped as outcasts, but in reality serve an important purpose in the world and help the main characters achieve their goals. Book one features Bigfoot, book two a gargoyle, and book three the Jersey Devil. Book four was in the works when the non fiction deal happened. It features the Chupacabra. We also have a novella, No Longer Alone. This is available for free. Details can be found here.
This year, we aren’t planning much for these books until after the non-fiction is published. At that time we’ll decide what comes next.
Are you a planner? Here’s a good and FUN article on goal setting for writers.