Dreams, Goals, Contracts, and the Day My Husband Contracted an #MMRomance!

When I do blog tours, I talk a lot about dreams. We're often told that dreaming is for babies and it's a waste of our time and we should be doing XYZ instead. And I'll grant, if you only dream...you're going to get no where. My (charming) father, used to say, "Wish in one hand, piss in the other..."

But overall, I think dreaming is important. Dreams sustain us when our wells run dry. If you find yourself re-writing a scene for the seventh time and you can't remember WHY you even bothered starting in the first place, you sit down and you dream big, and you remember, and often, you're able to go on.

I have two main writing dreams and they has nothing to do with publication at all:

Never stop writing and touch someone's heart.

Goals, on the other hand, I have in abundance. Real, measurable goals and slowly, but surely, I'm checking those goals off. They range from the very simple, to the wildly outlandish.

• Publish a novella
• Become a Goodreads Author
• Have my name on a cover
• Make $20
• Make $40
• Sell 100 copies
• Collaborate
• Do a DSP chat
• Publish a novel
• Have my book in the library
• Have an audiobook
• Make a bestsellers list
• Win awards
• Win the Newbery (that's seriously a goal of mine...)

Last night, I accomplished another goal on the list:

Publish a novel.

Dreamspinner Press contracted my novel-lengthed work, The Most Beautiful Words in the World last night with a pub date of Oct/Nov 2014. It will be in print. I can touch it. I can hand it to people. I can set it on a bookshelf. There are so words to describe my joy.

As I'm marveling at this accomplishment, another contract comes in, this one for a co-written novella called Alchemy Ever After that will be out Dec/Jan 2015. And just like that, my husband, Siôn O'Tierney, became a Dreamspinner Press author alongside me. We've been writing M/M together for almost ten years, and it's so THRILLING to know that are names will be side-by-side on the cover of our collaborative work.

Dream big.
Plan sensibly.
Never stop writing.