New Year's Resolutions, #WIP500, and Cover Art

I hope your holidays were wonderful and that the light is returning to your part of the world. I already notice the sun stays longer in the sky before it sinks behind the mountains to the west.

New Year's came so quickly with all that was going on at the end of 2011 that it was upon me before I could blink (and I even manged to stay up until Midnight to watch the fireworks from the Strip). I realized I hadn't made any New Year's Resolutions. It occurred to me that maybe I didn't need them this year.

A friend said "New Year's Resolutions are like donuts. They taste good at the beginning, but weigh you down over time."

I laughed and agreed. It's hard to keep the motivation going to fulfill the resolutions all year long. However, I think Resolutions are important as benchmarks to reach for and that they are doable if the goals are realistic.

This year I only had one resolution: #WIP500. I'd write 500 words a day on a Work In Progress, every day, for the whole year. So far so good. I think my smallest word count thus far is 674 words. 500 words isn't that much, about 1 single spaced 8.5 x 11 page, but it seems to flow out of me when I sit down to really do it. In fact, I can write about 100 coherent words in 5 minutes, so ideally, I should be able to do it in a half an hour. Think of what I could do in my daily 3 hrs of writing time!

I had wonderful New Year's, especially when Evernight Publishing picked up my vampire novella Her Devoted Vampire and gave me a tentative release date in March of 2012. Yesterday, I received the cover art for my story and I my jaw dropped.

I think the best part about it is the name printed across the bottom: Siobhan Muir. That made my heart pound more than the hot guy on the front. My name! My book! My cover! Woohoo! It made my day and I haven't touched the ground since.

In celebration of this upcoming release, fellow Evernight author Shannan Albright is having me on her blog tomorrow in her Author's Spotlight series. You're welcome to come on over and comment on the interview. You can learn all sorts of interesting things about me that I'd never reveal otherwise. Yeah, okay, probably not, but do stop by and let me know someone's listening. :)

Also tomorrow is the weekly #ThursThreads Challenge here on my blog where you tie your tale to the prompt. Stop by and enjoy the writing abilities of several great #flashfiction writers and try your own hand at writing up to 250 words for the prompt. It's a fun time. You can even use it toward your #WIP500 daily quota.

If you're interested in joining #WIP500, hosted by Cara Michaels, you can sign up on her blog and join the forum, where other authors encourage you in your goals. It has been a great help and motivator. Good luck in your own New Year's Resolutions and in your writing. Happy reading! :)