What I read in 2015

At the beginning of the year, I joined the Goodreads reading challenge and set a goal of 100 books. If I had known how busy I was going to be this year, I wouldn't have. :-) However, as of yesterday, I somehow managed to finish my 100th book of 2015!

The ratings for the books I read this year broke down as follows:

• 5 stars - 25 books
• 4 stars - 44 books
• 3 stars - 29 books
• 2 stars - 2 book

This comes out to an average rating of 3.92 stars per book.

Of the 100 books that I read, 47 were indie published, which is almost half of all books read in 2015 and more than I read last year.

The ratings for the indie books came out to be:

• 5 stars - 11 books
• 4 stars - 25 books
• 3 stars - 11 books

As you can see, the average rating for the indie books (4.0) slightly beat out the rating for all books. That's right, the indie books I read this year were collectively better than the traditionally published ones! Furthermore, four of them made my list of the top ten books of the year, which is the highest representation among indie books since I started keeping track.

Next week, I'll list my top ten favorite books read in 2015. Stay tuned!

2015 Holiday Sale!

It's that time of the year again! I love the Christmas holiday season, and to celebrate it, I'm discounting ALL of my books on Amazon. Between now and the New Year, every one of my books will be on sale for 99 cents or FREE! Get them before prices go back up!

99 CENTS:

George and the Galactic Games	In the Hands of Children	Beyond New Eden	Keep Your Enemies Close

Gifted	Transmissions	A House in the Woods	Protect	Search

FREE:

Drive	Through a Tangled Wood	Celestial	Spectral Tales

Happy holidays!

Writing is like exercising

I recently completed my second NaNoWriMo, and I'm happy to say that I reached the 50,000 word goal for the second year in a row!

Compared to last year, this NaNoWriMo served as a kickstart for my writing. I hadn't been writing as much or as regularly in 2015 compared to previous years because of a greater workload at my day job. It got to the point where I was only writing on weekends, and then I'd have a hard time getting myself back into my story once I sat down to write. However, with NaNoWriMo last month, I found that, as the month progressed, it became easier to write, even during the week.

The experience reminds me of how I feel about exercising. I try to do some form of exercise every day, even if it's just twenty minutes on a treadmill. The reason is that, if I take a few days off from my workout routine, it becomes significantly harder to get back into it. By my rough estimate, for every two days that I don't exercise, it takes me a day to get back into shape. However, if I don't stop exercising, I don't get out of shape, and my daily routine doesn't feel like a chore anymore.

My writing followed the same pattern during NaNoWriMo. Last month, since I wrote every day, it was easy to keep on writing, even if it was just for half an hour. No wonder I felt so sluggish before November. I hadn't been exercising my "writing muscle." Since I didn't write for five days and tried to get back into it on Saturday, I wasn't able to get into a rhythm until the weekend was over. This year's NaNoWriMo has taught me that I have to try to keep up a writing routine every day if I can. It will actually make my writing easier.