2023 Reading List: Part 2

SF Books Singletons in a Series

So, continuing with what I've read this year. Some brief comments on each, as I find I'm not one for writing in depth reviews.

Octavia Gone by Jack McDevitt

Book 8 of Alex Benedict series.

I'm a big fan of McDevitt's work, and his A Talent for War comes highly recommended by me. 

Octavia Gone was better than the previous book released in his other series, but I kind of feel that the series has lost steam. Though I could be wrong.

If you're a fan you will likely enjoy this. If not, it depends on whether or not you like archaeological mysteries set in the far future?

 

Monster Hunter Bloodlines by Larry Correia

I've been hooked on this series since I read Monster Hunter International.

Eight books in and all the plot threads are coming together.

For those who hate Larry, I don't care. Like John Scalzi, his online persona is one thing, and face-to-face another. I found him charming, and his wife Bridget is lovely.

Besides, guns, monsters, more guns, more monster, world ending events, all written with humour that makes these a fun read.

 

Failure Mode by Craig Alanson 

This is book 15 of the series that I reviewed here. Of course we had to get the book that ties up Skippy and Joe and his merry band of pirates story.

The series as a whole is a little padded out, and a lot of the fans thought the ending felt flat. I on the other hand thought the ending was the best it could be given the set-up.

Once you've saved the galaxy any sorting out of loose ends up is everything is going to feel flat. However, there's new book out, so we shall see where the story goes next.

Alliance Rising by C. J. Cherryh 

An Alliance–Union universe novel.

Rimrunners is my favourite in this long running series. Each novel tends to be a standalone that adds to the richness of the universe. All the stories are snapshots of particular events that lead to Malazan and the Company War.

This is the story of how the balance of power between Earth, the stations, and Cyteen changes, which sounds a bit blah, blah, blah, but really isn't.

Oddments (short stories) by Marko Kloos

This is a collection of Kloos's short stories. I love his Frontlines series and must at some point try his Palladium War series too.

My copy is from the first print run and lacks the table of contents, which makes it a super rare collectable (at least in my fevered imagination).

I have the new Scorpio Frontlines: Evolution arriving soon. So this is a series I recommend. 

 

 

Memory's Legion (short stories) by  James S. A. Corey

What can I say about this series that hasn't already be said? Probably nothing.

This is a collection of all the short stories that add different perspectives to the various reveals in the main novels. Answering questions like what happened to Nagata's son? What the future holds for Amos?

 A must read for all fans of the Expanse series.

 

3zekiel (First Contact) by Peter Cawdron

This a series that isn't a series in the conventional sense of a shared setting and continuing characters, but rather a one that explores various first contact scenarios.

Both this and Clowns really gripped me, and I want to read a bunch more of his novels in due course.

 

 

 

Midworld by Alan Dean Foster

A part of his Humanx Commonwealth series: Midworld; Cachalot; Nor Crystal Tears; Voyage to the City of the Dead; Sentenced to Prism; The Howling Stones; Drowning World; Quofum.

This is pretty much a standalone story. One could see how this story along with Call me Joe by Poul Anderson, may have inspired Avatar.

Foster is not noted as a great prose stylist, but he can sure spin a solid story. His ability to weave plots is second to none.Classic old school SF.

Probability Moon by Nancy Kress 

First book of a trilogy.

Yeah, not sure about this. It has promise, but it's the first book in a trilogy, which I haven't been able to get copies of to finish reading.

 So colour me cautiously optimistic that I'll enjoy the rest as and when I get copies.

 

 

SF  Standalone Books

Redliners by David Drake

Okay, David Drake died this year, which prompted me to pick up and read this.

I think it's better than his Hammer Slammer series. Strong words when you think about the love and esteem that fans of Mil-SF hold that series in.

Here's why, it doesn't read as trauma therapy, but rather asking and striving to answer how society should handle soldiers traumatized by war?

It's a great read. Arguably his best book. YMMV.

 

There is no Antimemetics Division and Ed by QNTM aka Sam Hughes

QNTM aka Sam Hughes writes books that will not be to everybodies taste, because he expects the reader's ability to keep up, and  takes no prisoners, gives no quarter if they can't.

That puts off some readers who expect more explanation, character development, plot etc. If that is you, probably best to skip these.

However, if you want squirrely cosmic horror to blow you mind, he's your man.

 

Redemolished by Alfred Bester (short stories and essays)

My reading, while mostly focused on SF, is still pretty eclectic because I also read to learn how to write better. Writing takes practice, and reading is part of that practice.

Anyways, enough of the bloviating.

Alfred Bester is like Roy Battie from Blade Runner. He burnt so bright, delivering two outstanding novels and some short stories to then fall to the wayside.

 

Farside by Patrick Chiles 

A story set five-minutes into the future, featuring commercial space flight, and then all hell breaks loose.

I remember enjoying this book when I read it, but for the life of me as I sit writing what to say I can't remember anything of note.

 

 

 

WHISPER Flashpoint by Brandon Fero

Marketed as the first in a series that has not seen any sequels since publication.

I know Brandon through social media, and a shared love of mecha. He started with a Kickstarter for a line of miniatures and this novel to tie everything together.

Imagine if Tom Clancy wrote Mil-SF and this is what you'd expect to read. Here's hoping sequels appear.

So that's another 14 books to the 46 I've read this year.

 

 

Non SF Books Read

Slough House Series by Mick Herron (8 books)

Slow Horses, Dead Lions, Real Tigers, Spook Street, London Rules, Joe Country, Slough House, Bad Actors, and Standing by the Wall (a collection of 5 Slough House novellas).

Okay, this series is outside my usual ball park. I forget exactly why I picked up the first book, maybe because I wanted to read how to handle characters working for intelligence services.

Without doubt this is the best written series of of books I've ever read, and I've read some pretty well written series like those from Adrian Tchaikovsky and Kristine Kathryn Rusch. So this is high praise coming from me.

There is also a series on Apple TV that has drawn accolades for the series and the acting. Gary Oldman leads, and I will pretty much watch anything with him it.

Shelter in Place by Nora Roberts

I read this because it was recommended as a good standalone that would introduce me Nora Robert's writing, and as an example of how a top writer handles stories with traumatic events that can upset readers.

It's well written, compelling, but not my cup of tea.

I shall think about trying something else of hers. Don't get me wrong, it's just I'm not all that interested in stories whose ideas are rooted in everyday pain and misery.

Summary

Total banger reads: The Final Architecture trilogy; the Slough House series; Dogs of War & Bear Head duology; Redliners; and Monster Hunter Bloodlines.

Running total number of books 46 + 14 + 9 = 69.

2023 Reading List: Part 1

SF Books Series

So, another year's worth of reading and time to pontificate on them. This year I've read a record number of books. Okay, first up books where I've read a large number of books of a series, or both books of a duology, or all three books in a trilogy.

The Retrieval Artist Series by Kristine Kathryn Rusch (16 books)

The Disappeared, Extremes, Consequences, Buried Deep, Paloma, Recovery Man, Duplicate Effort, Anniversary Day, Blowback, A Murder of Clones, Search and Recovery, The Peyti Crisis, Vigilantes, Starbase Human, Masterminds.

The first three books in this series didn't grab me like her Diving series, so I took a break before starting book four.

Then the story just took off and I was compelled to consume the rest of the books one after the other.

So highly recommended as worth your time.

 

Xeelee Series by Stephen Baxter (6 books)

Xeelee Omnibus (collecting four novels: Raft, Timelike Infinity, Flux, Ring), Xeelee Redemption, Vacuum Diagrams (short stories).

Baxter is not an author I've read before, and I started with Proxima, which is not a Xeelee book, but afterwards I thought it was time to try.

He's not what could be called a writer of emotional conflict, but a big ideas author, and there are some big ideas here. Mind blowingly big.

Redemption is the last book in the timeline, which means I'm reading the last two books out of order, but this won't be a problem.

Poor Man's Fight by Elliot Kay (6 books)

Poor Man's Fight, Rich Man's War, Dead Man's Debt, No Medals for Secrets, Last Man Out, and the recently No Man's Land.

Another new to me author this year, and I'm currently reading the last book as I write this so, you can take that as another recommendation. 

I like the three main characters Tanner Malone, Alicia Wong, and Lynette Kelly.

A rich universe, with plenty of exciting alien shenanigans.

 

Drop Trooper by Rick Partlow (4 books)

Contact Front, Kinetic Strike, Danger Close, Direct Fire. First four books in an ongoing series with 14 titles published so far.

Recommended to me by Paul of the Man Cave.

I bought the first and ended up reading it one sitting. This meant I had to go buy the next three because I wanted to know what happens next?

Full throttle, high octane action featuring power armour, orbital drops and aliens.

What more do you want?

 

The Final Architecture by Adrian Tchaikovsky (3 books)

Shards of Earth,  Eyes of the Void, Lords of Uncreation.

Bought the first as a hardback because it was on sale.

I then ended up buying the rest in hardback to match, because... I don't make the rules.

Really impressive high concept space opera that has pretty solid science ideas.

Loved it so much I bought another couple of his books. See below.

 

War Dogs by Greg Bear (3 books)

War Dogs, Killing Titan, Take Back the Sky.

Recommended to my by my friend Brian, this trilogy is best described as a fever dream.

It describes a desperate war against aliens set on Mars and across our solar system.

Parts of the combat reminded me of the first half of Steakley's Armor.

Also has some interesting ideas on the Fermi paradox.

 

Proxima & Ultima by Stephen Baxter (2 books)

I picked up a copy of Proxima for free at an Eastercon a long time ago as a freebie. 

It sat on my TBR pile for years, lost under other books.

As I said above, he's not a writer who deals in emotional conflict (the passion of love etc.), rather he writes plots about big ideas of what if the universe or reality works like this...where this is some physics idea or consequence of physics.

 This duology gave me the confidence to seek out his Xeelee books.

 

Redux Duology by Gregg Cunningham (2 books)

Redux: The Lost Patrol, Redux II: The Search For Floyd.

I got the first book because of the intriguing reviews about how the author handled a  time-travel war story with cascading causality.

Where each trip creates a paradox as the outcome of each trip takes hold and has to be corrected.

This has a plot best described as a messy ball of timey-wimey time loops that interleave to form a plot that comes to a bitter sweet ending in the second book. 

Floyd, Commander Redux's faithful robot is funny to boot. Worth your time if you like adventures through time.

Provenance & Translation State by Ann Leckie (2 books)  

Provenance is a low key story that disappointed some readers, but which satisfied me. 

Translation state has a terrible cover, but holds a compelling story about the Presger translators. 

Fans will enjoy what little is given away here about the Presger and the Radaach.If you liked the original Ancillary trilogy then you'll probably enjoy these. 

If you didn't enjoy her previous trilogy, then it's probably best to avoid these two too.

 

Dogs of War & Bear Head by Adrian Tchaikovsky (2 books)

Rex is a good dog.

Rex and the other bio-engineered animals in this story are being used as special operations weapons for unpleasant wars in far-off countries.

 It will hit you in the feels. 

The sequel is arguably better.

So that's a brief overview of the first 46 of the  books I've read over the year. Next half tomorrow.

New Year: Looking Back, Looking Forward

Time to look back over what I've read this year, and I've read a lot more this year, exceeding any expectations I might have set (I read about 25 to 30 books each year), which is good.

I'm going to start with a metaphor that may or may not work, gentrification.

The SF genre started out as slums. No self respecting writer would write science fiction, think of those who said things like my story is about the future not just squids in space.

Yes, Verne and Wells wrote what we would call SF, but they didn't think of themselves as SF authors. The foundations of the genre were built on their work, but it was Hugo Gernsback who coined the word scientifiction, his preferred term for the genre of science fiction.

Stories that were to be built on science.

His magazine Amazing Stories being the mechanism for bringing this new genre to the market. To say he was a bit of a wheeler-dealer who played fast and loose in business is just an illustration of the human condition where everybody is struggling to make money.

So from these humble beginning the genre evolved, weighed down by aspirations of respectability.

Some writers wanting to be seen as more than purveyors of squids in space. That in a nutshell is what drove the writers in the genre, which can be seen in the New Wave and Harlan Ellison's Dangerous Visions.

Hence my metaphor of gentrification.

Arguably, which is what I'm doing here, is that it is the gentrification of the genre that has led to the current divide in SF between the traditional published authors of the last 40 years and the independent authors that have risen out of Amazon's KDP.

Nailing my colours to the mast, I see the political shenanigans of the genre as more indicative of the divide between high and low brow culture than anything else. I hate snobbery, so colour me as ambivalent towards the intellectual rarefaction from high brow pontification (yes, that's an ironic sentence).

So, here's my opinions on what I've read this year.

SF Series

Expeditionary Force series by Craig Allanson (14 books)

With all of the above in mind, otherwise why would I write it, Allanson is the E. E. Doc Smith of the 21st Century. This will probably replace the Lensman series that young readers will find that introduce them to SF.

So, not great literature, but fabulous story telling, which some older readers of a more refined mindset may find repetitious, but remember other people have simpler tastes, and that is a good thing.

Dresden Files by Jim Butcher (2 books: Skin Game & Peace Talks)

Hopefully I don't have to extol the virtues of this series? In a fair world where snobbery wasn't rampant these would've won the Hugo, and be considered good gateway books to the SF&F genre. But we don't live in a fair world, and it's worth remembering that if it were fair then everything bad would've happened because we deserved it.

Kris Longknife series by Mike Shepherd aka Mike Moscoe (19 books)

Think Hornblower, or Honor Harrington, and you'll have a good grasp of what this series is about. Could also be a contender of the next  E. E. Doc Smith or perhaps David Webber?

I don't know. All I can say is that I consumed them as fast as I could read.

Murderbot Diaries series by Martha Wells (6 books)

And just to be contrary, not really contrary, just detached from all the emotional turmoil that subsume the genre since 2009 or thereabouts, here is a series by a traditional published author who has had a along career before these breakout books (breakout being the term for best sellers that used to be the hallmark of publishing, back in the day, before the event).

Again, I consumed them with a passion only tempered by the cost of them.

Centers of Gravity by Marko Kloos (Book 8 of the Frontlines series)

An ending of the story for the characters, but hopefully not an end of the stories in this universe. There is much left unresolved about the Lankies and the fate of humanity in a hostile universe.

I've just read that there is a spin-off series coming out, which is good news. I'm now looking forward to reading it.

SF&F Singletons

Clowns by Peter Cawdron

My Sweet Satan by Peter Cawdron

Peter's stick is writing first contact novels. He plays with different scenarios for each of his stories. He's written a whole bunch of these And both of these were great. Cerebral SF that make you think. I like the attention he pays to the psychology of first contact.

I shall be reading more.

The Rise of Io by Wesley Chu

The Fall of Io by Wesley Chu (sequel that's really the second half of the story)

My beloved bought these, and I read them so we could discuss what we thought. They were fine, but truth be told I could barely remember reading them.

I don't regret reading them, but they weren't memorable. Read so that I have an understanding of what is happening in the genre, and not look like a complete fool.

Nor Crystal Tears by Alan Dean Foster

Read this oldie that remains a goldie. Foster is what I would consider a pedestrian writer, his prose doesn't set the world alight, but it is workmanlike, all the joints fit, the finish is smooth. Again, in a fairer world he would be talked about more, because if he'd written these in the 50s and 60s he would've been considered a successor to the greats.

And, I should add, this is a delightful story.

Re-Reads

Alien by Alan Dean Foster

Aliens by Alan Dean Foster

After describing Foster as pedestrian, you may wonder why I read and re-read his work? They answer is complicated, but can be boiled down to the fact that I'm drawn in by the unpretentious stories. The deliver what they promise, and he ends them well enough.

Workmanlike (courting controversy with gendered language) they show people as just people (even aliens are people), and that is good enough for me.

A Talent for War by Jack McDevitt

McDevitt is one of those authors I buy in hardback. He's much maligned by the glitterati of SF for his settings being the 1950s transposed into space. Not a failing in my mind, because psychologically I doubt that the evolution of humankind into some future transhumanist vision of mankind will ever be realized.

Not that it can't happen, but if it does then writing about it will be as comparable to the visions of traveling to the Moon in a chariot pulled by Swans.

A Talent for War is one of those books that blew me away, and still stands up when re-read. Arguably, he's never written anything quite as good since, but I still buy his books in hardback, and that should tell you all you need to know.

Odds & Ends

38 North Yankee by Ed Ruggero

Very much the oddity here, but I'm a wargamer, and this is one of those books that any wargamer interested in what if scenarios will likely read. It is dated (doh, you don't say, Ashley!), and the writing is in what is called omniscient 3rd point of view, which is out of fashion.

But only snobs care about fashion, all I care about is story. And the story here deals with the North Koreans invading the the Republic of Korea. Given how much Korean drama this year on Netflix I suspect this drove me to read this book now.

Non-Fiction

Existential Physics by Sabine Hossenfelder

I read science fiction, I write science fiction, and I'm all too aware that I'm not a scientist. So this is me keeping up with what a scientist thinks about science, and Dr. Hossenfelder has a delightful wit that makes her discussions even more interesting for those of us who sit on the sidelines of the advance in science.

So, I make that 52 books I've read this year, which is a record during the time I've kept a blog recording such fripperies. It is good.

I finish this by wishing you all a Happy New Year.

2018 Reading round up

Bought a copy of this when I found it cheaper on AbeBooks. The film is one of my all time favourite movies, and the novelization was a fascinating read.

I started the year with 31 books in my to be read pile, but got distracted when I went back and re-read some old favourites to cheer myself up.

The Compleat Bolo by Keith Laumer.

Which I read when I started writing my cybertank stories, because it's always good to go back and look at the source material before doing one's own homage.

Over the course of the year I read a bunch of books. All mentioned in passing here.

Adiamante by L. E. Modesitt Jr.
Into the Guns (America Rising Book #1) by William C. Dietz.
Seek And Destroy (America Rising Book #2) by William C. Dietz.
Battle Hym (America Rising Book #3) by William C. Dietz.
Altered Starscape (Andromedan Dark Book #1) by Ian Douglas.
Darkness Falling (Andromedan Dark Book #2) by Ian Douglas.
The Human Division by John Scalzi.
The End of All Things by John Scalzi.
Alliance of Shadows (Dead Six series) by Larry Correia & Mike Kupari.
Monster Hunter Siege by Larry Correia.
The Two Moons (Inherit the Stars & The Gentle Giants of Ganymede) by James P. Hogan.
The Two Worlds (Giants' Star & Entoverse) by James P. Hogan.
Mission to Minerva, by James P. Hogan.

When I was acclimating to the medication I found myself reading more and and what I said can be read here.

The Heritage Trilogy, Semper Mars by Ian Douglas.
The Heritage Trilogy, Lunar Marine by Ian Douglas.
The Heritage Trilogy, Europa Strike by Ian Douglas.
Soda Pop Soldier by Nick Cole.
A Hymn Before Battle by John Ringo.
Gust Front by John Ringo.
When the Devil Dances by John Ringo.
Hell's Faire by John Ringo.
Harry Dresden Files, Proven Guilty by Jim Butcher.

Then as the year came to a close I reviewed my friend Alex's book and some others I had read too, here.

A Fistful of Elven Gold by Alex Stewart.
Leviathan Wakes by James S. A. Corey. 
Caliban's War by James S. A. Corey.
Hydrogen Sonata by Iain M. Banks.
Surface Detail by Iain M. Banks.
The Puppet Masters by Robert A. Heinlein.
The Big Jump by Leigh Brackett.
Warlord of Kor by Terry Carr.
Forbidden Planet by W. J. Stuart.

I make that a total of 34 books read this year if one counts both the Hogan compilations as being two books each. Looking at my to be read pile I have 22 books left. I better go out and buy a few more books.

I also read the following non-fiction books, but I only reviewed one, which is linked below.

J. M. Bickham Writing the Short Story.
Dwight V. Swain Techniques of the $elling Writer.
Leonard Bishop Dare to be a Great Writer.
John Ross GURPS: Russia. 
Stephen King On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. 

So, just put this up as a place holder, to remind myself what I've read and enjoyed over the last year.

Summary of the Books I Read in 2017

So, now it's the time to reflect a bit on what I've read last year. I was determined to reduce the number of books on my to be read pile, which I counted at the beginning of the year revealing I had 30 unread novels. I've managed to read 29 of them this year.

Eric Frank Russell The Great Explosion (read over on Galactic Journey)
Arthur C. Clarke Childhood's End
Glen Cook The Dragon Never Sleeps
Jim Butcher Dead Beat
Larry Correia Hard Magic
Larry Correia Spellbound
Larry Correia Warbound
Larry Correia Monster Hunter Siege
Larry Correia Monster Hunter Alpha
Larry Correia & Mike Kupari Swords of the Exodus
William C. Deitz Andromeda's Fall
William C. Deitz Andromeda's Choice
William C. Deitz Andromeda's War 
David Hambling The Elder Ice (reviewed by my friend Roger here)
Sarah A. Hoyt A Few Good Men
Mike Kupari Her Brother's Keeper (also reviewed here by my friend Roger)
Andre Norton Star Rangers
Andre Norton Fore Runner
Andre Norton Fore Runner: The Second Venture 
Andre Norton Stargate
Christopher Rowley Starhammer
Christopher Rowley The Vang: The Military Form 
Christopher Rowley The Vang: The Battlemaster 
Tanya Huff A Piece Divided
Michelle Sagara Grave: Book 3 of The Queen of the Dead
Clifford D Simak Cosmic Engineers
A. E. van Vogt The Battle of Forever 
Michael Z. Williamson A Long Time Until Now 
Michael Z. Williamson When Diplomacy Fails

Disclaimer: Some of the links go to same page, and didn't get around to reviewing all the books I read this year.

After reading 29 books, I've just counted my remaining to be read pile, which now has 31 books. This makes me laugh. Besides the novels I read a number of non-fiction books too.

J. M. Bickham Elements of Fiction Writing - Scene & Structure
J. M. Bickham The 38 Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes
J. M. Bickham Setting
Kristine Katherine Rusch The Freelancer’s Survival Guide
Robert Shufflebotham  InDesign in easy steps
Dean Wesley Smith Writing into the Dark: How to Write a Novel without an Outline
Dwight V. Swain Creating Characters: How to Build Story People

NB: And the astute readers will have noted that I've gone through and revised all the tags on this blog. For two reasons. First this blog is now going to be more focused on what I've written, and secondly, it was all getting rather out of hand and overly long.

Happy New Year & Reflections on 2016

With my new quiver I have the whole the whole badass archer thing down pat.

Time for me to look back and sum up my thoughts after four years of writing.

Work wise, it has been a complex year for me, what with starting the day job.  Two days a week, may not sound like much, but I run a clinic at a major London NHS Trust, and the work demands a lot of me.  Regardless, it's something I thought I'd never do again after my illness, and at the end of January I will have been working for a year.  And there's archery... a sport, come hobby, come martial art I've taken up, with the aim being to get me out of the flat and doing more exercise, which is good but takes time.  However, all good, all things considered.

Other things that have consumed time this year, besides getting a new camera–that took several weeks to get used to using–was having to change my internet service provider and buying a new computer.  Both of these took up more valuable spare time that I could have been using for writing.  So much for my excuses.

Less good was having my first novel turned down, and now I have to decide what to do next?

Realistically, given I don't have an agent, sending it out around the publishing houses is a waste of time, and given that good agents are as rare as rocking horse pooh I think I shall avoid going down that path.  I have a plan, but you'll need to be a little bit patient with me as I put things into place before announcing what I intend to do next.  I need to get several other things in place.

One of those things is my second novel, which is stuck in the editing and polishing stage, with minor re-writes of stuff and additional scenes being worked on.  That may actually add a lot of words to the novel, as in twenty thousand or so, depending on what I decide to do.  At this moment  Strike Dog is currently running at 101,724 words, so we shall see how this goes, but whatever happens it means it's going to take me longer to finish than I expected it to.

My third novel Ghost Dog, running at 97,475 words, is also still being worked on after my Alpha reader pointed out I had planted a sub-plot at the beginning of the story and singularly failed to capitalize upon it.  Doh!  Tracking my words written this year is therefore a bit difficult, but I guess it ranges from 199,000 to 398,000 words edited, given I've done two drafts of each novel.

But then there is the writing for the blogs: nine pieces for Galactic Journey that came to 8,230 words, 51 pieces on here that came to 18,155 words, and 52 pieces for my other blog adding 12,682 words, plus a few odds and ends.  This comes a total of 39,067 words.

Adding everything up I make this a minimum of 238,266 words up to 437,465 words written.

This is way down on last years totals, but there again I had the day job, which only goes to show how much time that actually takes.  Still, it sounds like excuses to me and I'm not one who likes excuses.

Reading wise, the number of books read this year felt low, but after compiling my list I see I managed to read 21 novels, which is only five less than last year.  I've also read five non-fiction books, which when again rather surprised me as I hadn't thought I'd read that much either.  So I seem, despite what I felt, to have made good on intentions and managed to almost equal last years total of books read with less spare time.

This only goes to show that feelings are not facts.  Useful to hold onto when things feel like they're getting on top of one.

NB: Told by my beloved that I should show the groups I was getting.

My group of three top centre, Susan's bottom centre.

Happy New Year & Reflections on Year 3

The first grey day of 2016 but leaves on the tree – go figure.  Growler, my truck, confirms it's dry.

I enter year the third of writing with what I hope is the light at the end of the tunnel, namely sending Bad Dog out to do the rounds once the final edits are done.  It's been a long hard slog, far harder than I imagined when I started.  While I went into writing full-time with my eyes wide open, I hadn't foreseen the impact the process would have on me.  This all sounds remarkably self-centered, but it's more a comment about the impact of working alone and processing critical feedback from third parties.

With regard to word counts: I've written 64 posts for this blog that comes to 30,638 words, up from last years 23,201; then there's the 45 post for my wargaming blog which amounts to 14,113 words, up from 12,559, which is especially surprising considering that I feel I've been neglecting model making and painting; I revised Bad Dog twice this year for 174,320 words; I'm on my third revision of Strike Dog which makes 245,197 words; and I've started work on Ghost Dog and have gotten about halfway through the second revision for 149,615 words; grand total 622,701 words or not depending on how one accounts generating new words versus editing old ones (see last years post where I discuss whether to count high or low).

Either way I've written about double what I managed last year.

That doesn't mean that any of the writing I did was any good but quantity does have a quality all of its own.  I really wanted to start writing a new story in 2015 but, until I finish what I've started, I have to be disciplined and just knuckle down and get my work out into the market.

However, one consequence of all the work I've been putting into my military SF trilogy this year is that my Call of Cthulhu novel has suffered from a severe case of neglect.

Also, I'm currently in the special kind of hell reserved for writers when faced with editorial changes for my finished novel Bad Dog that's distracting me from thinking about the structural changes I need to make from the beta reader feedback for Strike Dog (like last time, Brian McCue has gone above and beyond the call of duty, and without his sterling work I wouldn't have the tools I need to write the story I want to tell), while trying to complete the second draft of my third novel Ghost Dog.  Cue violins.

So, now it's the time to reflect a bit on what I've read last year.

Totting up my list, I see I've managed to read 26 novels, two of which were non-SF: Team Yankee by Harold Coyle and Red Storm Rising by Tom Clancy. I wanted to get around to Cauldron by Larry Bond but failed, maybe next year. These are all part of my research into what are considered successful military novels for my idea of turning my short story Territory into a sprawling military SF novel about AIs in a future war.  Inspired by the Bolo series by Keith Laumer.  On the basis if one is going to steal ideas one steals from the best.

As I only managed to read 16 novels in 2013, and the same again in 2014, reading 26 this year is a big improvement.  However, in 2013 I read eight non-fiction books but only one in 2014, and two in 2015.  So while I'm up on the previous year I'm down overall.  What I take away from this is that I need to be a bit more disciplined about taking time to read things other than news articles and journals.

The point being that reading helps one become a better writer.  Perhaps not as much as writing more but, for example, reading Cherie Priest books made me look at how I structure my stories by manipulating sentence length.  A learning process that I'm still assimilating and making my own.

Let me finish by wishing you all a Happy New Year and thank you again for reading my blog.

Looking Back on 2013

On my pile of books to be read soon as I want to revisit this old favourite that made a big impression on me when I first read it all those years ago.  I was fortunate enough to meet Arthur C. Clarke at a small one day convention in London called Lunicon in 1976.

Over the last few months you may have noticed I've put more tags on my posts, and I've tried to make the blog reader friendly, for what is mostly a diary of my progress as a writer that I keep as a tool to strengthen my change of direction in my career.  If averages could be calculated from total page views then this blog receives about two hundred views per post.  The truth is a lot different.  On average I get between fifty and a hundred views per page, except when I don't.

Looking at the page tally the biggest hit last year was the post I did on Arthur C. Clarke about reading The Lion of Comarre and Against the Fall of Night with over 1200 hits.  I imagine that most of these were Googlebot hits, but I may be wrong.  Certainly it suggests I should mention Arthur C. Clarke more on my blog if I want to get more hits per post, as if I would ever do something like that!

I've just heard that John Lambshead is working on the sequel for Wolf in Shadow, which was one of the standout new author reads for me last year.  You heard it here first, or not if it's the case that you follow John's blog.  The other standout new author to me that I read last year was Michelle Sagara's Silence.  I recommend both of these books as well worth the time and trouble to hunt them down and buy them.

As I've said I've still working on the how the blog looks, what I put on it and making sure that things are tagged so that people can find their way around the content.  A lot remains personal diary keeping of what I write, but I intend to keep posting about stuff I've been reading and watching too.  Thank you for reading.