A Round Up of the Year 2015

First of all can I say, Season’s Greetings, Have a Wondrous Solstice, a Very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

I’m doing this mostly because it’s that time of year, and I believe in good cheer, but also because it’s the 21st of December and I’ve only just begun doing Christmas stuff, so nobody’s actually getting a card… It’s simply too late for that to happen. I apologise.

What a year 2015 has been!

I wrote a novel this year, I began another, which I hope to finish in the New Year, but it’s one of my own, so the chances of it ever being published and reaching an audience are negligible. That won’t stop me doing it, though, obviously. Sometimes, it feels like torture, but this is what I do, and this is what I love, and I can’t stop doing it just because what I write for myself and what I believe in happens to be a hard sell. I’ll give it to Robert (my lovely agent) when it’s done and let him wrestle with it. I also started to write a factual book this year, which is almost half-done. I’m going to send that, too, to find out whether Robert thinks it’s worth finishing. My beta-readers like it, but there’s quite a lot of work to be done to bring it to completion, so it’s worth finding out whether my agent thinks he can sell it before I commit.

I also gave away my Clit-Lit novel Addled Kat on this blog. Quite a lot of you have read, and apparently enjoyed it. Thank you.

A big chunk of this year has been given over to work on narrative for a computer game. I love to collaborate with the husband, and this has been a lot of fun. It’s also been brilliant working with some very talented, very energetic people in the games industry. This is something you’ll all be hearing about pretty soon. So, watch this space.

There have also been a couple of short stories, which will be published next year, notably an urban fantasy short for an anthology edited by Jonathan Maberry, and a combat SF story for a tenth anniversary anthology for NewCon Press edited by Ian Whates.

What else? Possibly my favourite job of the year has been writing back-matter for Dan Abnett and Ian Culbard’s Wild’s End: The Enemy Within. If you’re not reading it, I’d highly recommend it. It’s a wonderful, surprising comic from Boom! This is the second arc in the series that began with Wild’s End: First Light, which is now available as a collection. I loved the idea for this comic, and the husband’s writing is some of his best. I’m also a big fan of Ian’s art, which is subtle, clever, beautiful… I’m running out of superlatives. When I was asked to write some back-matter for the first arc I was thrilled. It’s only small jobs, never more than a couple of thousand words at a time, but the story’s so good and the characters are so much fun to write for and about that I’ve really enjoyed my small part in making this comic.

There have also, of course, been some blogs… Not many, I admit, mostly because my father died a year ago, and when I couldn’t write about that I simply didn’t feel able to write about anything else. 

Your favourite blogs of the year were my comments on mass shootings in America. I’m not sure what that says about us all as a society.

The Dort, making a song and dance of dressing the
Christmas tree on a previous occasion.

I have found that a lot of my blogging, recently, has been rather political. I don’t know whether that’s a sign of the times, or whether that’s just the mood I’m in right now. I guess we’ll have to wait and see if and when my mood changes.

With only four days remaining until Christmas Day, and one of those my birthday, there’s a great deal still to do, chez-Abnett: gift-shopping, house decorating, tree-procurement, gift-wrapping (assuming I manage to buy gifts), housework (it’ll still be there when I get around to doing it)… And we’re taking delivery of furniture and a crap-ton of logs for the wood-burning stoves. Did I mention that the food hasn’t been delivered yet? (thank God we did actually get around to ordering it), and cooking hasn’t begun.

So… it’s been a funny old year… A mixed curse… I’m going to concentrate on the good, and hope for a better 2016, not just for me and mine, but for you and yours too.

Best love

N