What are your "milestones" as an author?

My first fan mail was a HUGE milestone to me. The book that got it had a 4 star review from Romantic Times, but as far as I was concerned, the fan mail was my official 'jump wings'.

Followed by a throw away side character in my second book garnering a fan following. That was a total smile milestone!!!! People kept asking : When's Alex's book? (Alex is an *ss kicking, stone cold bad *ss realtor who fights monsters and sells property to them too. He has three or four lines of dialogue and is in one scene in the book, and one scene only. So you can see, this guy getting a fan following was kind of a trip.) I used to hear authors talk all the time about how fans would fall in love with a character that stole the show with only a limited appearance and always thought, wow, that's good writing to be able to bring out character in little to no word count. So getting the fan following was a feel good for me.

Another milestone: a big jump in my writing skills. It happened in A Haunting Affair, and was so off the wall while I was going through it I thought I had lost my ability to write at one point and had no idea what was going on, and almost stopped writing it. Then I grabbed my old books for perspective. And finished AHA. But where it really showed was test chapter 1 of the follow up book. I realized I'd made this big internal shift, and it was a really strange, yet cool experience. The only other way I could describe it is when you do something really hard and cant get it and cant get it and then after a while, you not only get it, you do it w/o thinking. Reading over chapter 1 of the next book and thinking about how crazy writing AHA was, and knowing: 'man, I just evolved, wtf?!?!?': THAT was a freaking milestone of EPIC proportions. It felt sort of like growing an extra arm or something.

My next milestone will be my first indie pub sale to a stranger. That will be a cool milestone.

And my fifth book. I don't know why, but I think that will be a milestone. A 'I can't believe I made it this far' kind of milestone. Plus, five is traditionally a number of universal change, so I bet it will bring something weird. I like weird.

Lots!

- Get e-book(s) published
- Publish book POD
- Get a 5* review from someone I don't know
- Sell 1,000 e-books
- Sell book related merchandising to people who aren't friends or family
- Break even (editing costs will be very significant since I want to produce good quality books, this is a career not a hobby for me.)
- Sell 10,000 e-books
- Sell hard-back edition
- Produce foreign translations
- See my book in a library
- See my book in a bookshop
- Sell 100,000 e-books
- Have TV/movie rights optioned
- Have people write fan-fiction involving my characters
- Have national TV/Radio station approach me for an interview
- Sell 500,000 e-books
- Have TV/movie production actually made
- Sell 1,000,000 e-books
- Sell 1,000,000 print books
- Be made Poet Laureate

So yes, I have modest ambitions...

My first milestone was writing a novella (about 20K words). I needed to know if I could write something with multiple characters interacting with a plot and character development. I'd written short stories before, but 5-digit word counts was something I'd never even done for college papers. It was a sci-fi story for younger audiences, Skyhook, I think they call it a Middle Grade book (above picture books, below YA).

My second milestone was the first time I participated in National Novel Writing Month. I wanted to see if I could write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. I did 95,000+ in 28 days. That was a massive confidence booster. I was even told the story was good. It was a superhero novel set in the near future I called The neXt Generation. Looking back, of course, I can see it needs work. It's on my to do list.

I'd hoped for a repeat performance in 2008 and was well on my way with 22K words in 11 days. Then, my wife died and I have yet to finish that story, though it is one of which I'm very fond (Clockwork Cowboy a steampunk/horror/western featuring a British Agent and his succubus companion tracking Jack the Ripper across the old west). I tried again in 2009 and struggled to get to 50K in 30 days. I liked the world, the story was OK, but I hit a brick wall.

I knew I had some more novels in me. I just had to figure out how to get them out. I did it again in 2010 with 80K words in 30 days. That novel became Wings of Twilight which is now with a professional editor and on track to be released electronically (and probably print through CreateSpace) this fall. Getting it released is my next milestone.

Once Wings of Twilight comes out, I'll consider myself a working author. I'll have a book out there making money for me (even if I never earn back the investment in editing and art). In the meantime, I'll continue my day job and work on the sequel, Iron Fist of the Oroqs. I'm currently almost 19K words into it. There's probably a third novel in the series, and certainly more stories in the world I've created. After I get the story down for Iron Fist of the Oroqs, I plan to set several goals for 2012: revise, edit, & release The neXt Generation (probably under a different title), revise, edit & release Skyhook (as a 0.99 cent novella), then finish and at least get Clockwork Cowboy into editing.

Hopefully, by 2013, I can be working on at least 2 novels a year, with at least one of them each year set in my fantasy world, called Calliome.