2018 Report Card
Welcome to this special blog post! As you may know, 2018 is coming to a close and everyone is already looking forward to 2019. You might already know what is planned for 2019 from me and if you don't, I will be doing another post about that tomorrow. For now, it's time for the second annual report card that I'm giving to myself. If you like to see how my 2017 was, check it out here.
I like to grade myself honestly and like to see where I can improve because we all can improve somewhere. I will be grading myself in the following items. They are sales, fans, blog, amount of books published, and one item I added this year, personal health. I added personal health because I felt like as authors, we have to look out for ourselves personally. That's because if we're miserable personally, it will begin to creep into our professional lives and our books. Without further ado, let's get started.
Sales (A): Very Good For my second full year, I see that I sold even more books this year. This time close to 2,000+ including KU borrows. Not earth-shattering, but it means I'm on the right track. It did start slow for me as I was still recovering from Hurricane Maria and the after-effects were still being felt in Puerto Rico. January wasn't too bad while February proved to be a rather challenging month after the third book of my zombie series did not do as well as I thought it would due to the much later release date.
When April hit, I had my second new release which was Angel's Nightmare Adventure: Zero and that was a hit, so sales began to go in the right direction. In fact, the spring turned out to be the best part of the year and sales were strong. Summer began strong but things started to slow a bit when the season got into full gear. However, when I released Prehistoric Crisis, sales picked back up and have been steady since throughout my books. Proud to say that I've really stepped up my marketing and learned a lot more in that aspect.
Fans (A+): Excellent Easily the best aspect of the year. I was able to make myself more known in the indie world, especially in the GameLit and Zombie communities. In fact, I know help admin/moderate a couple of big zombie groups which has helped me make more friends. I continue to remain humble despite the love I've received. I also began to build my ARC review team, so things are looking up for 2019. I continue to make more friends and fans currently. Some of these fans/friends were also the ones who stood behind me when I was down on my luck.
Blogs (C): Ok, but could have been much better Ok, did you expect me to give all A's to myself? Well of course not, the idea of the report card is to give an 'honest' assessment of myself. While last year I did pretty good on blogs, this year I started strong and ended weakly. Honestly, I think I was more worried about finishing my books, but I could have dedicated some time for my blog and build more content. So time for a facepalm for that. With the rapid release plan I have, it will be a slow start for the blog once again, but I promise to try as hard as I can to create more material for my blog. I know some of you love when I break down my books into pieces and go inside the easter eggs of my books. I need to do better in this aspect.
Amount of Books Published (A): Very Good I actually hit my goal of six books for the year, so I'm happy that I was able to hit my goal. So why did I not give myself an A+? The reason is that one of my books, Prehistoric Crisis did not come out as good as I wanted to. Part of that was because I was writing the book when I was really depressed. More on that in the next section. Overall though, I managed to be more productive this year. Yes, it did help that no major storms hit Puerto Rico this year. So I was able to enjoy a normal year, I can only hope for the same for 2019. My goal for 2019 is much more ambitious. I'm going for 10-13 books to be published this year. Many of which will be "The Fifth Survivor" episodes which is a serial release. I know it's moving up, but I know I can do it.
Personal Health (C-): Needs Improvement I'm gonna be brutally honest with you. This is the aspect where I need to seriously improve on. Hurricane Maria really did a number on my morale and it nearly destroyed me. During the beginning of the year, I had put it to bed. However, towards the end of summer and really the beginning of the fall that is where things went downhill. The one year anniversary of Hurricane Maria crept closer and I started to think of all the bad memories of when the storm hit. Not to mention I lost people that I knew and cared about to suicide and I don't have the best relationship with my relatives. In fact, the relationship is pretty abysmal. With all those factors coming into play, I was becoming more and more depressed as the peak of Hurricane season approached. I feared that I was gonna go through the same thing as last year. It got so bad that I was writing Prehistoric Crisis when I was depressed and I was starting to force words to come out.
I did something really stupid and dangerous. I never told anyone what I was going through as I'm a person who hates to show weakness. What I didn't know was that it nearly cost me my life. I will confess that I attempted suicide during October and luckily I survived the overdose. My friends came to me and try to tell me that I was gonna be alright. Eventually, I took a week off and found out that I have PTSD. It was a mix of relief and concerned. Relief because now I know what I suffer from, but concern because I know that PTSD will never go away. I realize that I now have to live with this for the rest of my life. I might decide to take a break during the month of September because that is when all the bad anniversaries take place and I'm sure my PTSD will be triggered badly then.
This time though, I know I have PTSD. As a result, I intend to be proactive. Not saying the suicidal thoughts will go away, but I should be able to fight them and break through. Out of all the aspects, this will be the toughest to tackle. However, with the friends I have and fans, I have a fighting chance.
So there you have it. An honest look into my 2018 year. Some really good things happened to me. Other things I need to work on and look myself in the mirror. It wasn't the perfect year, but the fact it was a normal year compared to last year, I'll take it. I like to wish everyone a happy new year and please take a look at your year to see what you could have done better. Do that and try to have a kickass 2019.
