Goal Planning 2026

Why Goal-Planning Is My Winter Sunshine

It’s that time of year again: goal-planning season, also known as “the one bright spot in the frozen wasteland of winter.” Spring will always have my heart with its wild weather and first flower buds, but dreaming up a new year of possibilities comes in a very close second.

While the days are short, the sky is gloomy, and everything outside feels like it’s made of ice, planning the year ahead makes me smile. There’s something about naming what I want that makes the future feel bright and wide open. Research backs this up for writers, too: clear goals make it easier to stay focused and actually finish the big projects that matter.

What 2025 Taught Me

Before charging into 2026, I had to look back at 2025 and ask three questions:

• What did I hope for?

• What did I actually do?

• And where did my priorities quietly shift when life had other plans?

The garden was the first casualty. Any hopes of sweeping improvements got buried under writing deadlines and Cottage East renovations. When you’re managing a full acre spread across three contiguous properties with a post-menopause body, a cranky hip, and a dream of a blooming paradise, reality eventually taps you on the shoulder. This year, reality won. Next year? We’ll see.

Then there was Cottage East. The plan: finished by January 2025, on budget, and followed by a basement apartment for our teen/new adult in Cottage West. The reality: contractor overruns ate not just the Cottage East budget, but also the extra $20k we’d earmarked for that basement build. We ran out of money before we ran out of project. So we did what we always do—kept trucking and rolled up our sleeves. My husband learned framing, trim, and baseboards; I learned just how stubborn we both can be. At this point, the only non-negotiable deadline is “before World Cup.” Preferably much earlier.

On the writing side, though? That’s where things really moved. I finished Zarmina’s World in March, wrapped G581: Plague Tales II in record time, and finally completed the entire Gliese 581g series—something that still makes me grin every time I think about it. I launched my first Kickstarter for the full series, it made a modest amount, and now I’m hooked. The Glass Forest is up next, and odds are good every future book will get its own Kickstarter run.

Life, Money, and Believing Bigger

On paper, my life looks busy to the point of ridiculous: multiple properties, a short-term rental business, three pool leagues, kids, an overflowing garden, and a full slate of writing and narration projects. In practice, it feels…full. Messy sometimes, yes. Overwhelming, definitely. But full of purpose and joy.

That joy sits on top of some hard history. My first four years of adulthood were spent in grinding poverty and a toxic relationship that felt like being trapped in a crab pot—every time I tried to climb out, something dragged me back down. Leaving that life meant rebuilding from scratch, with trauma, self-doubt, and a burning determination to never go back. It took decades to figure out a path that worked, but standing here now, the foundations finally feel solid. The long, slow grind is paying off. The house, the STRs, the writing business—all of it feels like it’s locking into place.

That’s where the writing-and-money questions come in. A successful author recently offered free mentorship to a handful of writers, and I applied. I probably won’t get it—70+ people threw their hats in the ring—but the application itself forced me to ask some uncomfortable questions.

• Am I using the STRs, the cleaning business, the “other projects” as a way to avoid betting on myself as a writer?

• Is this fear of failure dressed up as “being practical”?

My teen summed it up perfectly: “It’s like you’re putting the horse down before it’s even run a race.” That line lodged in my brain and refuses to leave.

Financially, the picture is clear: this year my writing averaged about $570 gross per month, which shakes out to around $150 net after expenses. That’s not remotely “quit your other jobs” money. If I want to reach $50k a year—or dream bigger at $100k—I can’t just write more books and hope. I have to learn marketing, lean into ads, experiment with viral discovery, and stop acting like it’s noble to make “diddly” while working myself to the bone.

I’ve always seen potential in everything else: the properties we rehab, my kids, the spaces and communities around me. It’s time to apply that same belief to myself.

Big Goals for 2026

With all of that in mind, 2026 is a bridge year. The real writing-business leap, in my head, happens in 2027—after Cottage East is running smoothly and the STRs are less hands-on. But 2026 is where the stage gets set.

Personal & Family

• Reach 175 pounds or lower by year’s end (currently 184), focusing on long-term health and pre-diabetes management, not self-punishment.

• Keep experimenting in the kitchen for the kids—especially helping my 10-year-old gain weight in a healthy, loving way.

• Get the kids into swimming lessons.

• Play in more pool tournaments (the billiards kind, not the swimming kind).

• Maintain a baseline of home organization and cleanliness, with special attention to those “shove it in a closet and forget it” spaces.

Short-Term Rentals & World Cup 2026

World Cup is a once-in-a-lifetime lightning strike for Kansas City: 650,000 people over five weeks and sky-high rental rates. That income could accelerate debt payoff and fund the upgrades we’ve been dreaming of—central air, a finished basement, a summer sleeping porch, a third full bathroom, maybe even an attic master suite. To get there, we need to:

• Finish Cottage East completely and have it operating as a short-term rental, with our eldest living on-site and managing it.

• Complete the third attic bedroom in Cottage West and create a separate listing for a 3-bed / 1-bath option to test what the market prefers.

• Paint the exteriors of both cottages in spring, plus interior touch-ups in Cottage West.

• Finish the Kansas City skyline mural on Cottage East’s back fence before late spring.

• Refinish our dining room table and move it into Cottage East.

Home & Garden

• Refurbish the “new to me” furniture a friend is gifting us, or at least the dining table.

• Clear weeds across the entire property, prioritizing the cottage yards and the property front line.

• Start seeds early and fill the property with hanging baskets and potted plants by summer.

• Finally finish painting the kitchen cabinets.

• Touch up paint in our Van Gogh bathroom where it’s wearing thin.

Writing Business: Production

• Narrate, edit, and upload Fate’s Highway (Book 0 of The Chronicles of Liv Rowan) as an audiobook.

• Finish The Glass Forest (Book 1 of Liv Rowan), prepare all formats (including audio), run a Kickstarter, and publish wide 2–3 months after backers receive their rewards.

• Re-record and replace the original narrations for War’s End: The Storm and War’s End: A Brave New World.

• Narrate Winter’s Child before drafting its sequel to sink back into that world, then finish The Return of Winter’s Child, run a Kickstarter, and publish wide.

• Either write Tempting Fate (Book 4 of the Benton Security Services series) or finish The Retirement Home—and in either case, run a Kickstarter once all formats are complete.

• Get my current 15 books plus any 2026 releases translated into seven or eight languages (Spanish, French, German, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, simplified Chinese, Japanese, and possibly Hindi) and uploaded to appropriate distributors.

Writing Business: Organization & Education

• Learn to fully exploit BookFunnel—reader magnets, direct sales, list-building, all of it.

• Migrate my planning and story bibles into Notion so there’s one central brain instead of five scattered ones.

• Choose and set up a dedicated series/fiction-organizing tool for characters, timelines, and details so I can move faster and cleaner on future books.

Writing Business: Marketing

• Pitch myself to more podcasts on a consistent schedule.

• Attend up to four author events—enough to connect, not enough to burn out.

• Grow my email list through giveaways, podcast appearances, and smarter use of the tools I’m already paying for.

Yes, that is a lot. Possibly too much. And that’s okay. I’ll do what I can, when I can, however I can.

Looking Ahead With Courage

There’s a mantra running through my head as I look at all of this:

I will not dwell on failure or feelings of insufficiency.

Life is too short to keep believing I am less than I am.

If there’s one true regret in all this, it’s that I didn’t believe in myself sooner—that I didn’t start writing seriously twenty years earlier. At 55, I feel like I’m racing time, trying to get as many stories out of my head and onto the page as I possibly can. But I also believe I have at least three more decades to play with, and I intend to squeeze every bit of possibility out of them.

My wish for you, dear reader, is simple: that in the year ahead you chase the things that make you feel most alive. That you give yourself permission to want more, to start imperfectly, to keep going even when the path is anything but straight. Our time here is limited. Our dreams don’t have to be.

And as for me? Whether it’s three books, four, or something entirely unexpected, I’m done putting the horse down before the race. The gates are open. Let’s see how far we can run.

Below are just some of the books running through my brain...