Hello all!! I thought it might be fun to have some of our Featured Authors join us for a few “end of the year” posts. Each day this week, we’ll have a new topic. Some days one author will fill the post, some days, we’ll have a few different authors sharing their thoughts. Some of the Featured Bloggers are even getting in on the fun.

Here are our topics for the week: be sure to check back (or subscribe – that would be easier 🙂 ) to see what our authors (or maybe even their characters) have to say about each day’s theme.

Monday: Book I’m Most Looking Forward To In 2016 (NOT My Own!)
Tuesday: Favorite Line (and Why) From My OWN 2015 Title 
Wednesday: Something I’d Like To Learn To Do In 2016
Thursday: Habit I’d Like To Break In 2016
Friday: A Toast To The New Year

You can find posts for today’s topic here, and over at Little Read Riding Hood. Today we’re talking about Learning something new in the new year. It’s never too late to learn something new… and I’m excited to see what our Featured Authors have on their checklists… (and… there’s a giveaway at the end!)

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Climbing The Focus Tree

Huh.

Short blog on a skill I want to improve.

I must have had a thing to blog about when I signed on, right?

Well, there’s always the perennial favorite thing I want to improve—my weight, right?  Doesn’t everyone? Me more than most?

Well, losing weight comes with activity, and activity means not just aqua, but little things, like cleaning the house and walking the dogs everyday and taking care of my family and… yeah! Oh my God! I forgot! I was going to…

COOK!  I’m going to improve my cooking skills, which means I need to follow recipes which means I need to… need to… buy recipe books! Wait, while I’m shopping for recipe books, I see some romance books, and some mystery crime thrillers and….

Oh! Yeah! That’s right. I wanted to write some crime thriller sub-genre! Which means I need to study police procedure, which means I need to talk to my sources!  Yes! My sources! I know three lawyers who write, and a crime scene investigator and… oh. Wow. I haven’t spoken to those people in a while. That’s too bad. I miss them! Do they know how much I miss them? Have I told them? OMG—Have I KNIT for them?  That’s right. I should knit for them. They deserve it!  Wait—there’s a lot of them. It needs to be something simple, big yarn, big needles, small and I need to go…

YARN SHOPPING! I do! I need to go yarn shopping and *lost in rainbow haze *  Oooh… lookit all the pretty colors. Pretty, right? I think I need an entire sweater’s worth of this color. I have to have this color right here. Oh shit—who was I shopping for? Does it matter? I just spent way too much money on yarn. Oh man—why am I knitting? I need to write—that’s how I make my living, I’m a writer, you know? So before I settle down to these seventy-twelve knitting projects, I’m should probably…

WRITE! RIGHT! WRITE! WHATEVER! I’m writing. I adore writing. Every book is the bestests funnest most awesomest amazing book I could possibly conceive of putting out. But you know, I’m writing a lot. Wouldn’t it be great if I could spend more time per book, and then make more money for each book? Hold on… let me finish this book. This one. This one. It’s the best book ever. I love this book? Don’t you love this book? Wait… nobody’s heard of this book. I should get more people to hear about this book. What do I need to do? What’s that called…

MARKETING! Oh my God! I know marketing geniuses! I should pay attention to them and totally refocus all my attention on marketing, but wait… that costs money, and I need to make money, but now I’m so stressed that I need to…

KNIT! But I shouldn’t be KNITTING, I should be

WRITING! But I shouldn’t be writing, I should be

Taking care of my family and COOKING! But I needed to follow recipes so I could lose weight and then I found all the books and I wanted to READ and reading is what I do when I want to WRITE and the writing is something I want to MARKET and the marketing stresses me out so I need to KNIT and the dogs sleep on me knitting so I need to

WALK THE DOGS AND CHASE THE SQUIRREL OF KNITTING TO THE MECCA OF WRITING WHERE I CAN READ ABOUT COOKING IN A FOCUS TREE!

*pant pant pant *

Huh. Maybe I should write about something else?

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Recently, someone asked my long-term goals, and I wasn’t entirely sure how to respond. I mean, I have goals, but when confronted with the “Where do you see yourself in five years?” question, I think, “Well, I’d like to still be doing what I’m doing now.”

Life is good, in other words.

But there are always new things to learn. They could be small things: a new craft, say, or all the words to the new Adele song to better belt it out in the shower. I read a lot, which is an excellent way to learn new things, even if it’s just trivia. As a writer, I always want to be getting better at my craft. One of my New Year’s resolutions is to be more on top of managing my new freelance business; I left the 9-to-5 at the end of September to work as a freelance writer and editor, and I love it and want to learn to be savvy enough to keep it going.

But here’s a big thing for 2016: my brother and his wife are having a baby in the spring. My brother is the first of us siblings to get married and procreate, and, although I have friends with kids, I don’t really spend a lot of time around them. So the real thing I want to do in 2016 is be the best, coolest aunt I can be. I’m the only aunt, so it’s a low bar perhaps, but I want my pending nephew to feel like I’m someone he can rely on, come to for advice, hang out with.

So that’s the big thing for next year.

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So… anyone out there have any plans for the new year? Not a “resolution” per se… but something they’d like to do/learn in the next 12 months? I can’t wait to hear what you’ve got planned!!

And… as a bonus… each commenter will be entered to win a digital copy of Kate McMurray’s latest, Devin December! Winner will be chosen at random, and notified by email, on January 2nd. GOOD LUCK!

And when you’re done here… go check out Rebecca Zanetti’s “thing to learn” for 2016, over at Little Read Riding Hood!!