Welcome to the New Writer Podcast – Episode 10

I’m Matt Brotherton, author of the Seven Keys Saga and other works.

Tonight I want to try something a little different. When I started the New Writer Podcast in August of 2014, I wanted to create a place where new authors could come and tell their story about how they got into the business of writing and let the world know a little bit about themselves and what they do.

My plan was to have a weekly or bi-weekly interview with a lesser know writer or artist and help others get their voices heard.

Unfortunately, what I’ve learned is that it is much harder to keep a consistent schedule when relying on weekly interviews, especially for someone like myself that is a bit of a hermit by nature. So, I’ve decided to change the basic format of the show a little bit.

I am still hoping to be able to help other writers and artists find their audience, but I’m also going to use the show to document my personal journey as a writer.

I will continue to do interviews and chats with my fellow authors, and those interviews will be available on YouTube as well as in the audio. I’ve created a specific playlist on YouTube for just the interviews, and you can find those by going to http://www.newwriterpodcast.com/Interviews

Still with me?

Awesome.

So tonight, I just wanted to talk about the goals I am setting for myself in 2015.

See, it’s only January 8th as I record this and I’ve already slacked off on all of them but one.

The last week of December I sat down and created a little list of things I’d like to accomplish as a person, a writer, a publisher, and a blogger.

So far, I’ve been doing a really good job as a reader, so I’ll talk about that first.

Writers are readers, and if they’re not, they proably suck, or smell funny… or both. I’ve always been a big reader, or a more accurate statement was I used to be a big reader, became a big audiobook listener, and am slowly finding my way back to a happy middle ground.

My reading goal for 2015 is to read 150 books, although I have my tracker set for 100. That’s roughly three books per week, and so far, I’m on track for that. I also know how important reveiws are for authors, so my goal for the year is to write at least fifty reviews.

I know, I know. That’s only 1/3 the books I plan to read, and there is a reason for that. See, I don’t plan on reading any crappy books this year, but I might, and I’m definitely not going to take the time to review them if they suck. Sorry, authors. I know that bad reviews are sometimes better than no reviews, but I’d rather not be the one handing out negativity all the time.

Generally, though, I can find something good to say about a book. Afterall, books are our babies, and even the ugliest baby still gives off brain-melting baby-vibes, right?

I’m a big GoodReads user, so you can follow along with my reading progress there. I created an easy link for it, too. http://www.newwriterpodcast.com/Goodreads. I’d love to hear from other authors and readers on there, and if you’ve got some book recommendations for me, send ’em my way. I’m trying not to be too terribly pigeon-holed into one genre of book this year, so send them all. I’ll take ’em.

Okay, so here’s the big part where I have really fallen down on the job this year. I intend to finish the first Chronicle of the Seven Keys Saga this year. That’s three more books. Now, I know, I wrote 4 of them in 2014, so I should be able to do 3 more in 2015, right? Well, I probably could if I could get myself going on writing them. Part of relaunching the podcast like this is to give myself...