My best friend and I exchange resolutions each year, and this week she mentioned that she’d had a check-in with hers. Some successes, some maybe-next-years. Typical of resolutions, that you win some and lose some. But winning some is sweet enough that we keep resolving.

2012 has not been the best year of my life, frankly. We lost my husband’s father at the end of 2011, and then my grandma just a few weeks ago, and in between, well, the election season was tough on my blood pressure and I worked a lot. A lot. If the Mayans are wrong about December, maybe 2013 will be better.

2013. That number just looks gross, doesn’t it? But 2011 was supposed to be my power year, and Eleven let me down. (Eleven is my favorite number. I know: nerd.) So I’m going to ignore the bad news vibes of that Thirteen there and get on getting on.

Let’s check in with my goals for 2012 before I set new, shiny ones for next year:

-To finish an agent-ready draft of The Black Hour.
Check.

-To submit to agents. (Not to GET an agent; that’s not up to me. But to try, which I really haven’t done. Slush pile ahoy.)
Check, and what’s this? I got an agent. This is one of the ways in which 2012 did NOT suck.

-Write some crime/mystery short pieces for submission.
Well. I wrote one. And submitted it. And got rejected. And haven’t sent it out again. But that counts, baby. Check.

-Engage more fully with the Chicago mystery writing community.
Oh, man, did I do this. I’m all up in that Mystery Writers of America Midwest Chapter business, doing their newsletter, and I taught a mystery class for Story Studio North Shore this fall. I also still belong to Sisters in Crime, though I don’t make it to their meetings as often as I should. I also went to Bouchercon again and had some official MWA Midwest business to take care of, so I think we could even say that I’ve gone national. I mean, I had breakfast with Mary Higgins Clark. CHECK.

-Present at AWP in March. (gulp)
Check, and I only said one bad word. Which was recorded. Forever.

-Start a new novel. (gulp again)
I’m glad I used the word “start” here. Check!

OK, so 2012 wasn’t all bad. I got to do some things I wanted to do. I got to go on a relaxing lake vacation. I got to see my best friend. Nothing catastrophic happened to my home (I’m thinking of NY and NJ here—if you aren’t following Cory Booker on Twitter, you are missing out on something truly amazing). I did some stuff.

Now what do I want to do in 2013? What do you want to do?