2015 review - awesome books

Books are the best. You've maybe heard this, either from myself or others. But really, books are the best, and this year has been full of some lovely, lovely books. These are a random selection of my favourites (not all of which came out this year, but I only discovered them this year so shush).

The Fold - Peter Clines
Clever, witty, creepy sci-fi that reminded me why teleportation scares the bejaysus out of me.

Positive - David Wellington
Quite probably the best zombie book since... well, since David Wellington's Monster Island books. Smart and scary, with a couple of delightful little fan-service nods, brilliantly written characters, and not nearly so much DOOM as certain other post-apoc books.

The Rest of Us Just Live Here - Patrick Ness
I feel bad for all the time I spent NOT reading Patrick Ness. This new one is easily my favourite, so funny and clever. I spent the whole time being delighted by the characters and writing (and reading the funniest bits aloud to my patient husband). Also, coincidentally, it's the first Patrick Ness book that hasn't made me bawl like a baby.

Railhead - Philip Reeve
SENTIENT TRAINS IN SPACE. At one point I thought there was going to be space dinosaurs and I legitimately lost my shit. The most fun book I've read all year.

Atlanta Burns - Chuck Wendig
I should've hated this book. It's exactly the subject matter I avoid at all costs (bullied kids stand up to bullies, yikes). But Mr Wendig has a nasty habit of grabbing you by the neck and dragging you through the story with such manic enthusiasm it's very difficult not to get caught up.

The Zoo - Jamie Mollart
American Psycho via One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, a creepy and dark psychological tale.

Revival - Stephen King
Wow, a new Stephen King book that I really liked? I'll take that.

The Mystery of the Clockwork Sparrow - Katherine Woodfine
Murder and larceny in the grand environs of a newly opened department store in period London.

Runemarks - Joanne Harris
This fun retelling of the Norse legends definitely wasn't released this year, but I loved it so I'm including it. :)

Bird Box - Josh Malerman
A neat idea, very well executed, and scored a triple whammy in our house: it made me sleep with the lights on, it resided for a time in the freezer, and it distressed the crap out of my husband.

A Court of Thorns and Roses - Sarah J Maas
Well, obviously I'm going to fall in love with any book featuring a sarcastic red-headed faerie named Lucien, that was always a foregone conclusion.

In total I've read approximately eighty books this year (I kept a spreadsheet), which is a vast improvement on previous years. I'd therefore like to give an additional thank-you nod to The Year of Reading Dangerously - Andy Miller for encouraging me to get back into reading as a full-time habit. Fifty pages a day or bust!

With that in mind, I'm also determined to finish A Brief History of Seven Killings - Marlon James (which is neither brief nor limited to seven killings, but IS very good) before the end of the year. My resolution for 2016 is not to let any book defeat me.

(My other resolution is MORE BOOKS, of course)

still doing that writing thing

This was something my friend said to me a while back. She'd come round to help me drink whiskey and shout at Disney movies, which we sadly don't do often enough these days. I've mentioned before that I don't have a set word count I try and hit each day--instead I write something each day, even if it's just a few notes or a funny line someone said. So, since this particular day was likely to be eaten up by whiskey and shouting, I snatched a few minutes while my friend was in the bathroom to write in my notebook.

It wasn't anything great, literally just: this is where the current WIP is going tomorrow, when hopefully you won't be too hungover to do anything and a few lines about the next scene.

My friend returned before I'd finished and I explained my "write something every day" policy. Her response was, "Oh, are you still doing that writing thing?"

This surprised me, because... well, what else would I be doing? I've never for one moment considered it was something I would stop. But why not? People quit hobbies all the time. I never progressed with playing the violin, or painting, or bread-making. There are things I really enjoy that I never have time for these days, like video games or sewing or Warhammer. So why was the idea of stopping writing so strange?

Just think about it... I could quit. I'd have extra time on my hands. I wouldn't forever be zoning out while thinking about characters or plots. I could rejoin the real world and not have to fret about stupid self-imposed deadlines or how many days are left in NaNoWriMo.

Oh yes, we're in NaNo month again. That's a whole separate post by itself.

But, obviously, I'm not going to quit writing. Not just because I'm stubborn, or because I want to be a proper, full-time writer, or because I'm pretty sure I won't find anything else I can do competently. It's just... I can't really imagine not doing it.

And that's the best thing about finally developing a good writing habit, I've realised. It feels odd when I'm not writing. I'd miss it. And for that reason, I can't see myself quitting that writing thing anytime soon.

HOME GROUND available FREE on Kindle this weekend

Wow, there're a lot of capital letters in that title.

To coincide with Manx Litfest 2015, my ebook HOME GROUND will be available to download for free between Thursday 24th September and Sunday 27th September 2015 inclusive:

On Amazon.co.uk

On Amazon.com

If you like zombies, history, horror, and getting something for free, please do check it out.

countdown to Manx Litfest 2015

This has really snuck up on me. Seriously, I thought we had a couple of months left to get ready, but suddenly it's next week. o_O

Anyway... WOOOOO the fourth annual Manx Litfest is almost upon us!!

Details of stuff are available on the official website. If you're on the Island and you like books, it's the place you'll want to be. Also if you like poetry, science, whiskey, zombies, and shrieking in fan-girl joy.

Last year I discovered that you really should come prepared to events like this, so here is my unofficial guide to essential Litfest gear:

If y'all are attending, come find me at the bar and I'll get a round in. :)

born to runner-up

Practice makes perfect.

We can probably agree, in general, that the above statement is correct. You start off rubbish, you practice for untold squillions of hours, you eventually get good. You're very unlikely to get good if you skip the boring, repetative middle part (anyone who instantly became brilliant at anything is free to ignore this blog post).

The more I stop to think about it however, the more I'm convinced it's not completely accurate, and the problem lies with the word 'perfect'. Can you really obtain perfection just through diligent practice?

An example: I can't sing. Well, I can sing privately in the car or over-enthusiastically at karaoke, but no one is ever going to pay to hear the sound of my voice. Now, if I practiced every single day; if I took lessons and learned techniques and really focused my mind... in a few years I could probably be competent. BUT... competent is a long way from perfect, isn't it? No matter how much time and effort I put into singing, I'm never going to star in Les Mis or get to the final round of X-Factor.

See, this is an issue I'm having about my writing. I would classify myself as a competent writer. I've completed about twenty novels, some of which are readable. I write every day. I take every available (affordable) course I can. I ask advice from anyone who'll tolerate my questions. I understand the basics of structure and plotting and why my characters shouldn't be so bloody passive all the time. I know how to use the word 'ameliorate'. I'm fairly sure I know what a gerund is.

BUT... competent is a long way from perfect.

If writing is a scale from 1 to 10, where 10 is Neil Gaiman and 1 is a drunk horse hitting the keys with its face, I'm probably... ehhhhh... realistically about a 6. Maybe a 7 on the best day of my life.

I'm definitely better than I was when I first started writing, at age 14, with a screenplay about killer mutated gorse bushes (it was called A Real Mutated One and was an unhealthy blend of The Thing and Reservoir Dogs, as far as I recall). I'm also pretty sure I'm a better writer than I was five years ago. A year ago? That I'm not so sure about.

I'm not convinced I'm still improving as a writer. I think I may have reached a plateau. And that's irksome, because I would quite like to be brilliant.

Don't get me wrong, there's nothing intrinsically bad about competence. I'm a competent cook and that's fine--I have no ambitions above feeding my family every day. There is no aspiration for me to become a professional cook or bake a meringue on live television or learn what the hell a bain marie is. A decent level of competence is both admirable and worth working hard for.

But to upgrade from a 6 to a 10... is that even possible? Or does every perfect-10 writer in the world have some spark of genius that simply can't be replicated by wishing really-really hard? Not everyone who learns the guitar has the potential to be Jimi Hendrix. By their very nature, perfect-10s are a rare, singular event, because if everyone was special then no one would be.

This is what I'm currently fretting about. Am I happy to be competent in my writing? And if not, is there anything I can do about it? Hard work is a significant part of the process, sure, but I suspect the perfect-10s also have a blending of genius, luck, and good timing. Maybe lazy geniuses never reach their full potential, but equally, hard-working competents without that indefinable flair may never become geniuses. Is that true?

I think I have to decide what I want to aim for, what I can realistically achieve, and how I intend to get there. Hmm.

my other boys

Jakob and Elliott are helping promote my shiny new ebook.

(Jakob and Elliott Taylor featured in a fairly-rubbish webcomic I used to draw. Doodling this made me realise I haven't drawn them for a shockingly long time... probably not since the real Elliott was born. I need to do more drawing.)

It's here!

Delighted to announce that HOME GROUND is now available in ebook!

On Amazon.co.uk

On Amazon.com

childish things

When I was a kid, I would read just about anything put in front of me, with one exception: I never liked kids' books.

I should quantify that. I did read children's fiction that I didn't realise was aimed at kids--CS Lewis, Willard Price, Tolkien, stuff my parents read as well. The books I had no interest in were anything that dealt with the real-life, everyday stuff that young people have to deal with, like school and homework and other kids. Even now, stories with a heavy bias towards that sort of thing leave me cold. I never cared for Harry Potter, for example. Why would I want to read about a not-very-smart student and his struggles to get through school unscathed? We have enough of that in real life, thanks.

In case you haven't already guessed, I'm an idiot. For years I've assumed children's fiction (and here I'm lumping together everything up to and including Young Adult) is not what I want to read. Obviously some people like those books, but why should I bother when there are proper grown-up books to read?

Again: idiot.

I've belatedly realised my error. Frankly, not only do I feel like a wally for dismissing thousands of stories out of hand, but I'm also mad at myself for excluding all those books from my life, due to nothing more than pure snobbery.

One of our two local libraries is the Family Library in Douglas. It's a lovely place and is completely filled with children's books. And yet the "Children's" section (the bit I would've considered being for kids; the bit with the picture books, where our youngest son instinctively goes first) occupies one corner of the big room. Everything else is stuff I want to read.

It makes me a bit giddy to go in there. Where the heck do you start? For someone who's avoided Middle Grade and Young Adult books for so long, where do I jump in? In our local libraries (I'm not sure if this is standard or not), the children's sections are divided up by age range rather than genre. For adult books, I know exactly where my comfort zone is: right at the centre point between the horror, crime, and sci-fi/fantasy sections. Why would I need to go anywhere else?

But in the YA section there're none of these familiar boundaries. Everything is lumped together, horror and fantasy rubbing shoulders with gritty drama and sweeping historical epic. I'm already at a disadvantage because, a) I don't know which YA authors I like (due to my own ignorance, I'll admit), and b) I don't read back-cover blurbs. So, much of the time I'm choosing at random. I like this cover, I recognise this name, this illustrator is amazing, I saw someone reading this on the bus... it's a whole new thing for me.

Obviously I haven't loved everything I've read at random, but I'm having a pretty good success rate so far, and I've discovered a bunch of authors who I absolutely love. None of whom I would've ever read if I'd kept thumbing my nose at "kids' books".

I suspect I sound like one of those people who suddenly realise they can get internet on their phones, when else everyone in the world has known for years, but I don't care. I'm having a blast. When was the last time I was so excited to be in a library? Oh, right, when I was a kid. Gotcha.

here hair here

My hair has suffered its share of abuses over the years. There's been a lot of bleaching, dying, DIY styling, and ill-advised home haircuts. It's a wonder the whole lot hasn't fallen out in disgust years ago. It also means, once my hair reaches any real length, it's lousy with split ends.

To call them the bane of my life is a bit melodramatic. They're irksome is all. And I've gotten into a habit, in procrastinating moments, of taking the scissors and sorting through the strands of hair until I find one that's frayed, and clipping it off.

This is a slow and pointless process that makes no tangible difference to the state of my hair. Eventually I'll conceed that the proper fix is to lop an inch off everywhere. Or pay a hairdresser to do it. Or shave off the whole damn mess and start over.

And, coincidentally, this is how my current writing is progressing as well.

office space

For a long while, I never had a designated workspace at home, particularly after our desktop computer exploded and we all gravitated to laptops instead. My preferred workspace became the sofa, under a blanket, with wine and movies readily to hand. Which is all well and good, but there's something to be said for having a place that's set aside exclusively for work.

With that in mind, about a year ago I bought a desk. It's an old writing desk, with sticky drawers and baize on the fold-down top that's so covered with ring marks it could double as a crop-circle blueprint. I've become very fond of it.

Because I'm a hoarder at heart, it's also covered in crap:

Just about everything there has some daft significance to me. Our engagement photo, two dolls my grandma left me, a plaster bust of Vlad Tepes given to me in Romania, several dinosaurs, a piece of glass I found in a glass-blowing factory when I was six, a bear made of blue-tack. I could tell you a boring story about every random item, if you stood still long enough.

This is a pretty tidy version of my desk, btw. There've been times when I can't get near it because it's covered in bills or books or socks. Look, there's even room for my coffee today.

In comparison, this is my husband's work desk:

He's in his second year of his nursing degree, and this is fairly indicative of how he thinks it's going, the poor lamb. His desk is pretty functional - it's covered in work, or work-related items (and also the baby monitor). His is an area for working; mine is to distract me from working.

And this is Jacob's desk:

Which is cute and teenage. The bonsai tree is called Odin.

These desks are all in the same room, btw, one in each corner, so we have the illusion of working together even though we're facing in different directions.

They also suit us as individuals. I couldn't work at Jacob's desk. For one thing, he wouldn't let me; for another I can't get out of the broken saggy office chair he insists on using. John's desk has too few distractions for my limited attention span. And I don't think anyone could work at my desk, because there's a system to be learned as to which piles can be moved and which are load-bearing to the upper layers of crap (also everyone hates my ergonomic chair).

Anyway, it's very comforting that we've got our own personal spaces. And if the work gets done, that's what matters, doesn't it?

It's 2015, Where's My Hoverboard?

Starting 2015 on an obvious and already well-worn question there, but never mind...

Anyways, how was your 2014? Did it feel kinda short? Like if you blinked too much you would've missed the whole damn year? Certainly did to me. Time is definitely speeding up, isn't it? I'm sure science has proved that.

Now here we are in 2015 and I still haven't found a cohesive and consistent format for this blog, so for the moment it will continue to be sporadically updated about nothing in particular. And for now, here's a run-down of what I think I achieved in 2014:

My main resolution was to write every day. Previously, I've set myself the target of one thousand words per day... which sometimes I hit and sometimes I didn't. The problem was, on days when I wasn't hitting my target then I'd feel bad, and there were conspicuous weeks when I didn't write anything at all.

So I set a new goal: write every day. Doesn't matter if it's a thousand words, two thousand, fifty, or just a few scrawled words in my notebook. On one day I wrote two hundred illegible scribbles (I may have been drinking). On another, the only thing I wrote down was, "he'd been dead so long that when they picked him up his face stayed on the carpet (true story)", which I found written in biro on my leg when I came home from a hard day at the pub.

I also kept a spreadsheet of my daily-weekly-monthly totals, because I'm sad like that. In 2014, I wrote a total of 295,670 words (not all new stuff - some was editing or rewriting, which got an approximate word-count assigned to it). My most productive month was November, unsurprisingly, when I clocked 54,562 words for NaNoWriMo. Least productive was February with 10,177. Most words in one day was 3,039. On average I wrote 24,639 words per month, 5,685 words per week, 810 words per day.

That last stat was a pleasant surprise. Apparently, once I gave up my determination to set down 1,000 words every day and instead concentrated on writing however much I felt like, I actually became more productive, and in the end didn't fall too far short of that arbitrary 1,000 wpd target.

I finished one novel in 2014 (a crime story I didn't really intend to write until I started), completed two-thirds of another (women's fiction, another genre I'm currently blundering into), I blogged and posted crits for my writer's group, I wrote synopses and outlines and a few poems, and scripted half a graphic novel about gangster-flowers. I also read 42 books (not as many as I'd hoped).

So there we go, a bit of bragging and a small ego-boost, and now at least I know where all those moments in 2014 went.

This year... well, this year I intend to keep trying to write every day, since it seems to be working for me. My new resolution is that drawing counts as writing, and any time I spend drawing can be given a word-count-equivalency, because I need to get back to drawing.

Happy 2015 to you all. :)