So, I’m starting my 2017 In Review post with less than seven hours of the year to go. Efficient, that’s me.
On a general basis, 2017 was pretty shite. I have major disagreements with the decisions made by the administrations both in the UK and in the US on pretty much every level. Even if you try to remove political thinking (which you can’t, and also my day job is working with homeless people, and you can’t get much more political than that unless you actually work In Politics), even if you remove any notion of wanting other people to be well and happy just for the sake of it, I’d still rather like people to have money to buy my books and the current economic climate in both countries looks to be making that less and less likely. And then there was various unfortunate events for friends and family. It wasn’t a great year.
However.
In terms of writing, 2017 was actually pretty good. Dark Sky came out in the US in the summer, to generally good reviews, and then in November Dark Deeds came out to even better ones. I’ve also had the news that Dark Run is going to be published in German in 2018 by the excellent folk at Droemer Knaur. On top of that, my first short story was published for Black Library, I submitted a second one, and now I’m working on a Necromunda novella to accompany the recent re-release of probably my favourite tabletop game of all time. And then I also started a Patreon, so if you fancy getting additional short stories then go and sign up there.
I also had a good time at the conventions I went to. Scifi Scarborough was fun, and I got to hang out with JS Collyer, another purveyor of space pirates. Nine Worlds was as brilliant as usual, and I also ventured to FantasyCon for the first time. Over the course of the year I made new author friends in the shape of RJ Barker, Anna Stephens, Lucy Hounsom and Jeannette Ng, all of whom are wonderful people and whose books you should read (without wishing to show favouritism I’m going to give a particular shout-out to Jeannette’s Under The Pendulum Sun, which is a fantastic (in all ways) gothic debut involving Victorian missionaries and faeries, and so multi-layered in terms of references to theology and other literature that a fair bit went over my head, but it was still a brilliant read). Then there was the slightly surreal experience of going out for ‘Freelancer Christmas Drinks’ hosted by Gav Thorpe, also attended by Andy Chambers, meaning I was in the same place and having conversations with two people whose Games Workshop outputs were huge influences on me as a teenager in the 90s (I also need to give thanks to Gav for our conversations about writing for Black Library).
So in conclusion, I’d like to thank everyone who’s read my work, reviewed it, bought it, interviewed me, or otherwise supported me over the past year. Thank you, all. I could deal with next year being like this one, on the writing success front.
I hope it treats you all well too.