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).

2018 top booky picks

It's been surprisingly difficult to pick my top books of the year for 2018, because there's been such a wodge of very fine reading material, even though none of my Big 5 Authors (the ones I shall defend unto death) have released new books this year. Having said that, my definite favourite book of the year is:

The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet - Becky Chambers
And I know this is a cheat, because it came out a few years ago, but the second sequel (Record of a Spaceborn Few, following A Closed and Common Orbit) came out this year so it totally counts, shut up. It's a marvellous trilogy - gentle and thoughtful and clever and often hilarious and occasionally heartbreaking, like all the very best sci-fi. My only criticism would be if you're looking for a fast-paced, plot-based romp, this might not be for you. But if you love spending time with characters then you'll heart this.

In no particular order, this is what else floated my boat this year:

Fir - Sharon Gosling
Came across this by accident in the library and it scared my pants off. Tight and claustrophobic and a lot more unnerving than you'd expect from its innocuous YA tag.

Call of the Curlew - Elizabeth Brooks
Our Elizabeth! So very, very proud of her and this marvellous time-slippy gothicky drama. Cannot wait for her next one.

Keep You Safe / Love You Gone - Rona Halsall
And our Rona too! In an apparent attempt to make the rest of us look sloth-like, Rona had not one but two amazing books published in 2018. Both are taut, fast-paced, twisty-turney thrillers, although if I had to pick a favourite I'd probably say I enjoyed Love You Gone the best. But they're both well worth your time.

Folk - Zoe Gilbert
Retelling of a bunch of folk tales, expertly capturing the dreamlike tone and feel. I'm really looking forward to reading this for a second time.

Paperbacks from Hell - Grady Hendrix
There's nothing quite so delightful as finding someone who shares your enthusiasm for a particular subject, especially if the subject is pulpy horror novel covers. I've bought three copies of this book so far this year (one for myself, two for presents) and am considering buying a fourth so I have a lending copy.

Force of Nature / The Lost Man - Jane Harper
OH MY GOD. I have a new favourite author. No, I haven't read The Dry yet (I got it for a Christmas present so it's next on my list) but based on these, her second and third books, Jane Harper is someone I'm going to talk about a LOT from now all. Her books are full of family secrets and sneaky motivations and the weather as an almost physical presence on the page. Glorious.

And a quick round up of other good things I read this year: I joined a book group, which directly resulted in me reading a lot more feminist dystopia than usual. Particular favourites were The Power by Naomi Alderman; Feminists Don't Wear Pink (And Other Lies); Circe by Madeline Miller; and Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge. Next year I might vote that we read something less weighty, however. :)

I finally read Northanger Abbey, and Middlemarch, and A Christmas Carol. No one can say I didn't. And I found out why EVERYONE raves about We Have Always Lived in the Castle (it's great, that's why).

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!")

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. :)