One last missive for 2022

Wrapping one up, ready for the next

Hello fiends

One last newsletter for 2022? Sure, why not. How’s your year been? I hope it’s been, at the very least, better than last year.

It’s been up and down for me, but overall largely positive. I’ve had four books with my name on the cover come out this year, and that’s no small achievement. In April I released The Fall, sequel to The Gulp. Hard to believe that was only 8 months ago, it feels a lot longer. But that book has been really well-received and I’m very happy about that. It’s good to have that first “Gulpepper Cycle” finished. The 10 stories across The Gulp and The Fall make a mosaic novel that I wasn’t sure I would manage to pull off, but I did. And I’m incredibly proud of myself for that. There will be more Gulp tales, but these two form a foundation for anything else that might eventuate.

Then in August, Cemetery Dance Publications published what’s quickly become my most successful novel to date, which is awesome. Sallow Bend is my first full-length novel in four years and it’s selling well and being wonderfully reviewed. There were some horrible hiccups around the initial release, but it’s doing well in spite of those things and that makes me happy.

In October I dropped a surprise book. And Fire Poured Forth is a mini-collection of my five previously-published military horror stories, with one extra, never before published, yarn. That’s a lot of fun and people are enjoying it, thankfully.

Then in November, Clan Destine Press released Damnation Games, my first foray into anthology editing. It also includes a new story from me, along with a plethora of amazing talent and I’m super proud of that book.

I also had new short stories published in SNAFU: Dead or Alive (Cohesion Press, October 2022), Found (Vermillion 2 One, October 2022), The Hideous Book of Hidden Horrors (Bad Hand Books, June 2022), and The Saturday Paper, and I dropped a couple of original stories on my Patreon.

When it comes to a year in review, that’s not too shabby!

But what about next year? Well, that just goes to show the unpredictable nature of this business, as right now I have exactly zero books slated for 2023. None. Nada. (Hold me.)

There should be news soon-ish about 2024, but I’ll need to figure something out for next year. I have some ideas. One of those includes serialising a short novel on Patreon… But more on that later.

But despite that publication record for 2022, you know what’s really weird? 2022 also marks the first year in more than a decade that I haven’t written a new book. Given that I normally write two books a year, this is both strange and deeply disturbing. There are good reasons for it, and I’m not letting it freak me out (too much), but it’s a hell of a thing.

It’s partly down to the fact I’ve abandoned one book and started another, partly down to the fact that I’ve been super busy with other stuff, and partly down to burnout. Which I talked about a bit before.

I did finish a new book (that took so many drafts to get right) even though I started it more than two years ago. I’ve got 30,000 words of the currently-abandoned book, which I will definitely get back to. And I’ve got 20,000 words of the new book written. But my gods, it feels weird to have no new books written this year and nothing currently slated for publication in 2023. *shudder*

Things are constantly in flux in this gig, however, so who knows what the fuck might happen next. Like I’ve always said at panels and workshops and so on – at the most fundamental level, I still have no idea what I’m doing!

What I’ve Been Enjoying

I recently watched The Expanse. To say I watched it is an understatement, really. I fucking inhaled all six seasons in a month. Holy shit, it’s some of the best television I’ve ever seen. So richly developed, such a wonderful future mythology created. The concept of Earth, Mars and The Belt, and the way they interact with each other and feud with each other, is compelling as hell. But more than that, the real power of this story, like so many others, is the characters.

It’s no lie that Amos Burton, Camina Drummer and Roberta Draper are now among my most favourite characters in the whole of forever. Because the show has such amazing world-building, the characters really inhabit that world. They’re built on a human generational history that really informs both their shared humanity and their cultural differences. The Belters in particular are a wonderful character creation. And within the story, every character grows organically. They all have an arc, but that arc stays true to who they are from the start. It’s never character development for development's sake, and their history and the history of their people informs their growth. It truly is an astonishing piece of storytelling, and an object lesson in characterisation.

And yes, I am absolutely going to read the books now too. (Just fyi, if you talk about The Expanse online, expect a deluge of fandom – it’s quite something!)

Otherwise, in stuff I’ve been enjoying, I’ve fallen behind a bit on reading Ellen Datlow’s Best Horror of the Year anthologies, which are always the benchmark in horror short fiction. Volume 14 has just come out, I’ve just finished reading 12 and I’m about to start on 13. If you read no other horror anthologies, you really should be across these. It’s a real bucket list item for me to get a story included one year.

Right, that’s enough waffle from me for now. I’ll be in touch again before too long, but in the meantime I hope you have a wonderful time over the next couple of weeks, however you do or don’t celebrate. And remember, whether you love it or not, it’ll be over soon – so enjoy or endure as necessary. May 2023 be the best year you‘ve ever had. I’m hoping that for myself as well, and the support of friends and readers is a large part of how that happens. Thank you so much for coming along with me on this crazy journey. I appreciate it more than I can say.

All the best, big love from me, and I’ll see you in 2023.

Al