As usual at this time of year, imma look back over my spreadsheet for the last twelve months and provide a short breakdown of what I've been reading and why, mostly for my own amusement:

Sooooo, in 2018 I read a total of 103 books (including graphic novels but not including books I read to my son), which is the exact same number as in 2017, conveniently. Like 2017, the majority of the books were Young Adult (18 books) but that's a really sharp drop from last year, when about half the books I read were YA. Non-fiction clocked in at the next highest (16) and literary fiction surprising me with 15. I've upped my game with reading more sci-fi (11) and crime/thrillers (13), and I've had to add a separate category for feminist dystopia (4) because it's apparently a new feature of my reading pile.

Disregarding co-authored books, about 60% of what I read was written by women.

Approximately one third of the books I read were by authors I'd previously read. Which means a respectable two-thirds were from authors I'd never checked out before. From those two-thirds, the highest number (13) were chosen at random from the library. Others were recommended to me either in person or online (or by a very enthusiastic librarian), or I picked them up because they were authored by our amazingly talented local author community, or they were being discussed at our book group (hence the rise in feminist dystopian fiction). I made an extra effort to read books I considered as "classics", including three from pre-1900 (the most I've managed in any year since high school).

I'm making an effort to read ebooks (in quiet moments when I'd otherwise be trawling twitter) but I've still not renewed my dalliance with audiobooks. I've also joined Netgalley, just in case I don't have enough books.

My book resolutions this year are to read more crime/thriller, since it looks like it's my area of interest now (oh, yeah, I have news to share in a later blogpost, check back for that), and to avoid bringing more books into my house unless I have an exit strategy in place for them (because hoarding).

book stats, everyone loves book stats

Happy New Year, and welcome to me talking about books again.

In 2017, according to Goodreads, I read 103 books (up on a total of 91 last year). I'm saying this to brag, obviously, but hopefully not to make anyone feel bad about their own acheivements - if you read five books or a hundred and fifty-five books, that's awesome. Books are awesome and we should all celebrate that they've been a part of our lives this year.

I kept a spreadsheet as well as updating Goodreads (because why wouldn't you want a spreadsheet?) and have finangled some statistics out of it:

By genre, Young Adult predominated again (39 books) although not as much as last year, with Proper Grown-Up Literary Fiction coming in second (15 books). I've been trying to read a few smart, grown-up books, mostly to prove that I can. I'm still not convinced they're better than kids' books.

Sci-fi was third, with 8 books. There's been some stellar (har) sci-fi this year.

I managed 13 Non-Fiction books (great improvement from last year) and 2 graphic novels (rather shabby effort).

By author gender, it's about 50-50 female-male, which surprised me because I deliberately try to bias my reading towards women authors. More shockingly, despite my stated promise to read more diversely, only about 15% of my 2017 reading was by authors who weren't white and/or CIS-gendered.

I'm still reading very few books on my Kindle - a grand total of 8 this year. And I seem to have gotten over my brief dalliance with audiobooks.

About a quarter of the novels I read this year were by authors I was already a fan of (or who I thought deserved another chance at converting me). Which means I tried about 75 books by authors I'd never read before. 28 were random selections from the local libraries (and a couple were direct recommendations by our lovely librarians). Another 15 were either recommended by friends or I tracked them down because of positive buzz online. Word of mouth is alive and well! Oh, and 7 books were by our visiting Litfest authors, because I need to keep my fangirling up to date.

Next year, I intend to continue discovering new authors and not understanding literary fiction. I will read more diversely, dammit. And I also intend to properly update my Goodreads account, because I've just started reading the same Douglas Coupland book for what I suspect is the third time.

more books what I read in 2016

Thanks to the wonder of my reading spreadsheet, I can bring you further details of what I read last year. I know, you're spoilt.

In total I read 91 books. Breaking that down into genre first:

Almost exactly half (44) were Young Adult, which is no surprise because a) I'm trying to write YA books at present so need to keep up to date, and b) because OMG it's the best genre. It bears repeating that in the broad category of YA, you've got the whole spectrum of genres - crime, horror, thriller, literary, sci-fi, fantasy, everything. I tried to read as variously as possible, aided by my random-selection process (see below).
I also read 9 Middle Grade books (as categorised by my local library), 7 sci-fi, 6 "literary" (judged by me as such, usually because they didn't fit into another convenient category), 4 thrillers, 3 women's fiction, 2 crime, 2 horror, 2 fantasy, 2 poetry compilations, and 1 historical romp. Also 4 non-fiction books and 5 graphic novels.

(This isn't including all the children's books I read with my Youngest, although to be honest a few of those were for me more than him.)

By author gender, it's pretty much a 60-40% split female-male.

Despite the hundreds of ebooks I'd acquiring on my Kindle, I only read 5 ebooks and listened to 2 audiobooks

I also kept track of the reasons why I picked up a particular book, mostly for my own curiosity. 30 of the books were by authors I'd previously read. Which means a solid two-thirds were by authors I'd never read anything by before. And it paid off, because I discovered some of my new favourite authors this year.
Of the rest, 14 books were random selections from the library. I absolutely judge a book by its cover - it's the only way, since I hate reading blurbs (I've had to stop reading tag lines on the cover as well, due to the number of books that think "you'll never guess the surprise twist at the end" is a) not a spoiler, and b) likely to make me do anything but put the bloody thing straight back on the shelf). For a few months I choose books based on cover colour (there're a lot of blue books right now, I noticed). I tried not to limit myself by genre, although obviously there's a YA bias.
13 books were directly recommended to me, either online or in person.
21 were books I'd heard mentioned on Twitter or in the Bookseller or somewhere else.
7 were for authors who attended Manx Litfest 2016, where I wanted to effectively fan-girl at them.

So looking towards 2017... I should read more non-fiction. And I've seriously neglected the crime and horror genres. Oh, and I should read more ebooks. Apart from that, I think I'll just read everything.

2016 - end o year stats

So. What've we been up to in 2016?

However you look at it, it's been a heck of a year, but I'm going to ignore all the important stuff for now and go with my usual yearly round-up of how much I've written in the past 12 months, because that's something I feel relatively positive about and because I have some nice solid statistics to fall back on, rather than my own shouty opinions.

(I'm not posting all this to boast, btw. I just like stats, and I like being able to take stock of what I've done in a year. Also I hope it'll show that everyone's output is different, we all work at different speeds, we all have different definitions of what is a fair amount of work, and no one should ever make themselves (or anyone else) feel bad for doing more or less than the next guy.)

In total, I wrote 414,204 words, which equates to approximately 1131 words a day average. To compare, in 2015, I wrote 359,224 words (about 984 words a day average).

These totals include everything - first drafts, rewriting, editing, blog posts, competition entries... anything I can claim with a straight face as creative writing. I also included drawing as writing (using the vague definition that a finished picture is worth a thousand words).

Breaking this down into positives:

I wrote the first drafts of two new stories, one of which is now my favourite thing I've written.
I edited two other novels to close-enough-to-finished level.
I polished TERROR ISLAND and released it as an ebook.
I filled up two notebooks with notes, ideas, and random crap.
I wrote every day, even if it was just a couple of sentences (although there were a couple of close calls).
I read 91 books.

And into negatives:

I didn't get as much drawing done as I wanted. Maybe only two or three days included any drawing.
I didn't blog very much.
I didn't crit as many stories for other people as I should've. In fact, I still have three crits outstanding, which is very poor behaviour on my part.
I still don't reply to my emails in a timely fashion.

But in general, I'm happy with my output for the year. I feel like I've done okay. I really hope everyone else feels they've done okay too, despite this horrid year, and achieved something they can be content with.

I'm going to do a separate post about the books I've read, because I'm sure you're anxious to see my stats about those too. :)

Happy 2017, peeps. Stay safe out there.

2015 - end of year writing stats

That's a boring heading, isn't it? Anyways, fresh from the Rakie-spreadsheet, some stats about my writing progress in 2015:

Total Word Count: 359,224
(Total for 2014: 295,670)

I'm happy with that. The main projects I worked on this year were:

Finishing The Extra (my Nano novel from November 2014 which I finally completed in March and have ignored since).
A small amount of work on YA superhero story Search & Destroy.
Rewriting and editing Fourth to the Devil (including dreaded synopsis and query letters).
Finally redrafting my YA time-travel, haunted house bonanza 2114, which was started for Nano 2013 and has now been renamed 2116 in honour of how unnecessarily long it's taken me to complete.
Notes on a supernatural crime story, White Death, that I really want to start work on.
Completed NaNoWriMo 2015 with Animal Bones, a rewrite of one of my earliest stories.
And the first draft of Floor 156, a dystopian thriller which I'm pretty sure no one will ever get to read, ever (some things are only written for our own funsies).

Oh, and the ebook of Home Ground came out. :)

One resolution for last year was to write every day, which I just about managed, although it was a close call on a few days and frequently I achieved only a few scribbled notes. Even so, I appear to have averaged approximately 980 words a day (allowing a margin for my shoddy maths), which is very respectable if true.

I also resolved that drawing counted as writing. This was to encourage me to devote more time to drawing, and I assigned an arbitrary word count to time spent (given a picture's worth a thousand words, and all that). I didn't finish anything major, aside from some wedding invites for my sister that turned out okay, but I'm happy that I spent a little more time than usual on a skill I've sadly neglected.

Soooo... projects for 2016...

First and last I need to finish the rebranded 2116. I'm at the horrible stage of editing where you read everything aloud and agonise for hours about word choice ("Do I mean bright or do I mean clear? Is spiderwebbing a real word? Is a culvert what I think it is?"). After that I need to redraft all the crap I wrote last year.

And then I have a stolen idea about dragons that I want to pursue...

In 2016 I will write. I will read. I will draw. I will blog. It's also likely I will drink too much wine and shout at cooking shows on TV. In my spare moments I might sleep. Also, Fallout 4.

Best wishes to you all for a shiny 2016. ("SHINY! That's the word I want!")

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)

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. :)

there's a mattress in the hallway

not a quote, there just happens to be a mattress in the hallway right now. It was delivered this afternoon, i haven't cleared space for it yet, and i keep forgetting it's there, so it gives me a cheerful surprise every time i go into the hall and walk into it.

anyway, mattresses aside, we seem to have survived another year. I've cheerfully failed at least one of my resolutions, which was to blog on here more often. But i did manage to get married, and i had a book published, and i've gotten a fair number of words written. About 274,000 words in total for the year (I kept a spreadsheet).

in a vague sort of breakdown, of interest to no one but me:

About 60k on my one finished project of the year, Blood of the Ancestors.
About 70k on my NaNoWriMo novel, which STILL ISN'T FINISHED and is beginning to annoy me now.
30k on an unfinished project, The Silver to the City. Once i finally figure out how to make it good, this will be my magnificant sci-fi octopus.
13k on Search and Destroy, most of which was written in 2009 and which, again, came to a staggering halt when i realised it sucks in current form. I think this will be the next thing i work on.
10k on the start of a lone-zombie story called (imaginatively) Loner. It might've been good if it wasn't so boring. Also unfinished. There's maybe a trend developing here.
About 7k on random world building, my first real attempt at world building. I liked it. I shall do more of it from now on.
15k on my stupid sucky ScriptFrenzy script, which sucked and was stupid. I maybe need to revisit it at some point.
About 25k on short stories... maybe four completed stories and one or two broken ones.
Aaaaannnd 20k or so on critting other people's stories (yes, i'm counting that in my word count, nyah).

that doesn't come close to adding up, but trust me, once you factor in a bunch of notes and aborted stories and the like, it does apparently add up to 274,000. Which (according to my quaculations), is something like 750 words a day. Ha! That totally cheered me up. I thought i'd been well lazy this year, but 750 words a day is more or less what i'd been aiming for. Plus i think i edited at least three or four of my novel-length stories to something approaching final polish.

didn't read nearly enough books, didn't reply to enough emails, hardly watched any films, but i did make my word count. And i drank a lot of wine in doing so. At the end of the day, could we want anything more?