So, it's the time of year when the newspapers, half the staff on holiday and the other half nursing hangovers, fob us off with reviews of the year which are nothing more than a rehash of the articles they can most easily lay their hands on, much in the way a cook conjures up a curry from the leftover turkey. Now, I've got more respect for my readers, yet – blame the sherry and figgy pudding, if not the reruns of sentimental Hollywood films – I feel a similar urge to regale you with a look back at my reading and writing and blogging year.
I hope you'll find the generosity to indulge me and perhaps return the favour in the comments box below. And, because it's the time of year for tantalising puzzles, there's a connection between the numbers marked with an asterisk.
I hope you'll find the generosity to indulge me and perhaps return the favour in the comments box below. And, because it's the time of year for tantalising puzzles, there's a connection between the numbers marked with an asterisk.
How do you like the new look? Grey and minimalist like me! Since, if it weren’t for Annecdotal you wouldn’t be reading this rehash/erudite review, I’d better kick off with the blog. Eighty-one posts (including this one) since its launch/ tentative emergence from its shell halfway through January (and even managing to infiltrate Emma Darwin's wonderful blog with my post Loving, Hating and Writer's Block), I’m grateful and gobsmacked that so many of you (i.e. significantly more than zero) are prepared to collude with my addiction, and amazed it’s so much fun. Even more amazing, instead of ignoring those social-media icons lurking in the top right-hand corner of the page like the surly soul I am, I’ve graduated from blogging to other forms of online look-at-me fora although, in my defence, it’s only Twitter (821* tweets so far) where I’ve any pretensions to do it half properly. (Note to the uninitiated: if you’ve ever tutted at the banalities of my Twitter feed down the sidebar here, any nonsense is fair game on Twitter as long as you’re using it to interact!) Though still in the foothills by many standards, my website stats have been gradually climbing (approx. 1439* pageviews in the last seven* days), along with my skills, and I look forward to yet more interesting interconnections over the coming year. (I’m posting every five* days (plus or minus two*) but still have yet to deliver on three* of the posts I flagged up at the end of October. Get ready for a moan about the difficulties of pitching and a glorification of a book of psychoanalytic case studies. I’m open to your suggestions for subjects to cover, places to go – just don’t ask me to join Instagram!
Online is more accessible, but print is more exciting. Short stories were Annethology’s original backbone and continue to attract readers to the site. Although I’ve written only seven* new stories of the year, I’ve been editing my old ones and following my own advice on getting them out into the world. The effort’s paid off with a healthy 29* publications (nine of these are reprints), yielding 49 stories published altogether since my first publication seven* years ago, with another seven* scheduled to come out early next year. I’m lagging behind in my aim to link each one to a blog post on a theme related to the story (hopefully in a way that will draw readers to my short fiction while still engaging those who aren’t so interested in pursuing the links) with 17* in various stages of preparation from no inspiration as yet to waiting in the wings. (Look out for posts on such diverse subjects as writing in the second-person; the joy of allotments; learning to accept good-enough; writing about terror and its aftermath; slipstream fiction; showing and telling; on not having a smiley face.) Because of my OCD-like tendency to catalogue and compartmentalise, I’ve had fun recently with my virtual annethologies page, herding my stories into overlapping categories on similar themes, although I’m not sure if 11* different headings makes it any easier to find the stories that interest you. If you’ve dabbled about there, do let me know what you think.
I'm saving How to Be a Heroine for International Women's Day I’ve read the 15 books on my October TBR pile, and many more besides (61* in total for the year which is about average for me). Through the new annethology reading and reviews page you can link to my ratings on goodreads (apologies that one of the widgets seems to have stopped doing its thing for the moment – will get out my spanner and hopefully get it fixed in the New Year); another addiction, I’m afraid, although I’m highly ambivalent about assigning them a score (especially as I seem to be a low marker and reluctant to give fives*). I’ll be posting #5* in my series on fictional psychologists and therapists soon (although the scarcity of comments so far suggests you’re not all waiting with bated breath). Number 6 will be on a book that came as a freebie (one of the unexpected benefits of being more networked) which, I hope you’ll agree, turned out to be more than worth the money.
Do read these wonderful debut novels if you haven't yet. When I emailed Alison Moore back in January, I had no idea how my author interviews series would take off. Eight Q&A’s later, I feel honoured at people’s willingness to take part and I hope you approve of my idiosyncratic selection of interviewees. (Just for the record: I read almost as many other debut novels over the year which, although well reviewed elsewhere, I personally didn’t enjoy enough to feature here. So far, no-one has refused my invitation, although one person has declined to reply.) I’ve really enjoyed the process and have learned so much from these novelists’ thoughtful responses to my fumbling questions which, of course, I try to feed back into the blog. I’m looking forward to the next one with Emma Healey and feeling ahead of the game as her novel, Elizabeth Is Missing, isn’t out until June (although I can’t claim it’s any credit to the website that I chanced to get my hands on a prepublication copy).
That’s enough of me, so it only remains to thank you for your support over the year and hope you’ll stick around for the next. And I hope you weren’t too irritated by the asterisks which were, of course, all *prime numbers. Let’s hear about your reading and writing year and, if you’re doing a similar roundup on your blog, do feel free to paste the link here. All the best to you and yours for the New Year and hope to see you in 2014.
That’s enough of me, so it only remains to thank you for your support over the year and hope you’ll stick around for the next. And I hope you weren’t too irritated by the asterisks which were, of course, all *prime numbers. Let’s hear about your reading and writing year and, if you’re doing a similar roundup on your blog, do feel free to paste the link here. All the best to you and yours for the New Year and hope to see you in 2014.
RSS Feed
