My family and I like to donate to charities through the year. The holidays are a great time for it, but so often in January our thoughts turn to what we can do to improve our own lives. This is fine, admirable even.

It might even be that your bank account is rather, we’ll say flat after the holidays. That’s why I’d like to suggest Wikipedia as the cause of the month.

Now, I hesitate to call Wiki a charity. I mean, raise your hand if you’ve never used it to research some piece or another. No, no one? Okay, let’s start with the fact that we owe them.

I love Wiki not only because I use it to work almost every day. I love it because it is nothing short of magic. It is written by anyone, everyone. I could hop on there right now and add to it, and so could you. Now what you or my add might very well be clever and useful.  I might well go on and write all about poetry or short fiction in an entertaining and educational way. But I might also go on there and write about nuclear reactors or Vietnamese cooking. I know nothing about those things and am not in any way capable of giving useful information.

Therein lies their magic. Despite the fact that Wikipedia is updated by anyone who might want to update it, it is surprisingly useful for research. I always use it as a starting point, and I surely do check multiple sources for all of my facts, but more often than not I find the information correct. That has to be magical.

Wikipedia is magic for another reason. They are the most often used website in the world, and they have no ads. I can’t say that. I do ads all the time. (Click here to pre order Thirty Days, Thirty Ideas for free, with the promo code 30one) What they ask for instead is an occasional small donation.

If you visited Wikipedia during the holidays you noticed the pop up asking for donations. “If everyone reading this would donate three dollars, we would reach our fundraising goal in an hour.”

If you can spare some time and three bucks, please do two things for me. Go to Wikipedia and donate three bucks. Even the most broke of college student can spare that much, and if not this month maybe you can next month. Then, if you’ve got a blog, maybe show some Wikipedia love there. If you do, please link to your post in the comment section.

Free education, free sharing of information is a cornerstone of the internet. Let’s all do what we can to help it out.

I love fairy tales, like a lot. Especially twisted ones like Tenth Kingdom, Fables and the classic The True Story of The Three Little Pigs. It might be rather telling that this was my favorite story as a child.

Circuits and Slippers blends that love of a twisted fairy tale with science fiction. This one will be on my list to order when it comes out.

One thing the editor would like you to know is that there is only room for one adaption of any given fairy tale. Cinderella and Pygmalion have already been taken by the editors.

Genre- Science fiction based on fairy tales.

Word count- 2,000 to 10,000

Submission date- April 8

Wait time- Some time after deadline.

Payout- Royalties split among authors. So, you’ll be getting some of my money.

Rights- Six months exclusivity.

If you like what you find here and want to support me, please check out my Patreon page. You can help me out and get some great exclusive fiction along the way.

Happy New Year! It’s officially 2016, and I can’t get wait to get started.

If you’re like me, you’ve probably been planning for the new year for weeks now. If you’re not like me, then you’re in the majority. I have a terrible habit of planning more than I work sometimes, and never more than at the new year.

I’m working on that. But planning has been important for the past year. 2015 was what I call a foundation building year. I wrote all of the content for Days, and lots of other collections that need work still. I worked hard on social media, and met so many great people. I launched Thirty Days, Thirty Ideas, and now I’m ready to collect it into a book. I finished Broken Patterns. of course. Foundation years are important, but they are taxing for an impatient person like me. It made things easier bear, having an idea where the finish line would be.

For now, though, there’s no one better to talk to about planning than a planner addict. I’ve tried everything. The problem is, a lot of these awesome planning tips don’t work long term. They either distract or are too damn complicated to be worth the trouble.

We’ll be talking about planning that works around children, day jobs and the terrible habits of an adult with ADD. If these ideas work for me they’ll work for you, because you’re probably not as flighty as I am and you can’t be worse.

We’ll begin in earnest on Sunday, but let’s start with a quick tip. Today is the day most people make New Years Resolutions. Don’t. Make goals. Real goals with a real game plan, not some vague wish. Today, think about where you’d like to be in a year. Think about your family, your personal care and your writing. Personally, I have a ton of goals for the year. Honestly, more than I really care to list here.  Instead, I’d like to share my major business goals. Each of these goals has a whole page of little steps, but that’s rather boring.

• Make actionable and inspiring content for you guys here. This will include posts, printables, and more information built in to my newsletter, Paper Beats World. One way I’m already doing that is by publishing Thirty Days, Thirty Ideas in January. Don’t forget, if you pre order it you can get it for free with the code 30one. It only works until the release date, January 21.
• Write awesome stories. Well, that’s my whole life, not just this year. I’m going to finish Starting Chains, and make a start on Missing Stitches. I’m also going to publish Days, which I might have mentioned about a thousand times. But, what I haven’t mentioned is the brand new surprise I’m planning. No idea of a time frame yet, but stay tuned.
• Start making money from my writing, so that someday I can write full time. As I mentioned before, I made no money during the past year of banging my head against the door of traditional publishing. I bet that indie writing will be better for me, but I guess we’ll see.

What are you planning for 2016? Will this be the year you get published? Or will it be a foundation building year like 2015 was for me?