Stefanie London's 2016 in numbers...

How is this the last post for 2016, already? I swear, each year seems to fly by with increasing speed. I was thinking about what to do for my ‘wrap up’ post on this blog and how I might be able to make it a little different.

So, I thought it might be fun to review my year…in numbers. Now, I’m definitely a quality over quantity kinda gal, but there’s a little left-brained part of me that really enjoys counting things. So, here goes:

In 2016 I have…

4 years married to this amazing guy

Been to five countries outside Canada (Germany, Austria, England, Australia, and Jamaica) and one province outside Ontario (Quebec).

Read 49 books (and hope to get another two in, at least, before New Years) and bought way too many to count!!

Written 232,000 words, released 4 books and sold 9 more to publishers.

Celebrated my 32nd birthday, 4th wedding anniversary (and being with J for 13 years!!) and two years in Canada (as well as getting our permanent residency status - woo!)

Consumed far too many flat whites to count.

And, since I’m a writer and know that numbers don’t always tell the whole story, here are a few highlights that can’t be quantified in numbers:

• This was my first full year as a full-time writer. Last year I was still working in retail (as a makeup artist for MAC Cosmetics) for the first few months, so 2016 marks the year that I worked for myself for a full year. That is a pretty amazing thing. 
• I hit a bestseller list (The USA Today with Pretend it’s Love) and was nominated for a major award (The RWAus RBY award with Pretend it’s Love). Both of those things are not just highlights for 2016, but for my writing career to date.

So many places to go...

I loved Helen’s post about what she plans to do for 2017, so I’m going to ‘borrow’ it and put a few things down here. Here are some of my plans for next year:

• More travel! Both J and I are going home to Australia in August and doing a short stop-over holiday on the way back in San Francisco. Plus, we’re hoping to go to the US (possibly Vegas).
• I’m planning to go to two writer’s conferences next year – Romance Writers of America conference (in Florida) and Romance Writers of Australia conference (in Brisbane).
• Write more words! I actually wrote less words this year than I did last year due to a crazy editing schedule, and some particularly difficult edits for one book which sucked a whole month out of my schedule.
• See more of Canada, both in Toronto and outside. 

I hope you enjoyed seeing my year in numbers! I’d love to hear some of your 2016 highlights in the comments. I hope you all have an amazing end to the year and a brilliant start to 2017. See you in the New Year xx