The 2010 Books

I am running a little late with these posts this year: there was some stuff to sort out around New Year's Eve and yesterday, the sorting of which left me le tired, and now it is January the second and I have not made my year-end posts. But clearly the way to deal with delay and opposition is to just do it when you do it, so I give you:

( What I read this year )

( I also watched some movies: )

I said last year that I'd revisit this notion that I'm drifting away from genre books, rather than that the genre hasn't been putting out books that have me as the target audience of late; okay, it's a fine difference, but there's the question of which one's in motion. Looking at this year's booklist -- and it's been influenced by a couple practical things like available storage space in the Treehouse; what's stocked at the Dayjob library, where I get books for free, free, free; and interestingly, the bookstore having moved from Queen West up into my neighbourhood in November, and note the sudden uptick in genre titles near the end of the year -- I'm starting to think it's a little of both. But mostly actually me.

Most of the genre books I read this year are the books of friends or acquaintances (The Bone Palace, The Executor, The Gaslight Dogs, Corambis, Finder, A Book of Tongues, etc.); I picked them up in a large part because the author is someone I know and like. This isn't actually a slam on the marketability and/or quality of said books. I tend to have friends who write very good books. A lot of the other genre books on the list are ends/middles of series books I've been already reading (the Carrie Vaughn, Bujold, and Mike Carey entries). And while that is reading genre, that's not exploring it actively.

What I am exploring these days seems to be "classic" or Canadian literary fiction and historical nonfiction, with a sprinkling of YA and small press genre books. And, looking at what's on my bedside table right now (which is where the To Read stacks live), that's set to continue.

You people have yet to write me some good hard SF. Seriously, hop to. :p

Books my head exploded over and I would have handsold by the crate at the bookstore for this year: Red Harvest, A Book of Tongues, Finder, Bitter Seeds, High Fidelity, Stanley Park, Bottle Rocket Hearts and Persuasion. Darin Bradley's Noise could belatedly make this list, but I'm still sort of rolling it around in my head; it's a dense, odd little book and either there's something down there in its middle that I just haven't gotten down to yet or there's nothing and I wish it was there, but I have to think a little more to be sure either way. The Howard Shrier detective novels don't feel like my Toronto or my Judaism and those things jar, but they have a soul I really like. I did not fall in sloppy love with Jack Graham's Caribou, but it was tiny and neat and well-made, and for a little self-produced first or second outing, that impressed me. Here's his micropress. Go look.

I am very structurally disappointed in Kraken and Pegasus, and I am disappointed in people (marketing departments, publishers, whoever) who don't tell me in the book that a book is Book 1 and not just Book, and leave me structurally disappointed in things. The space between my index finger and the end of the pages shapes the reading experience, consciously or not. Please remember this.

I didn't find The Hunger Games as mindblowing as everyone said it was, but I suspect coming in after reading that much hype just didn't do the reading experience many favours and I'll still probably read the second. I kind of pushed through Blackout and I am kind of pushing through All Clear, and there is not a lot of hope for it at this juncture. I am saying these things because well, they are true, and because these are books and authors who I'm pretty sure can handle one raised eyebrow on the Internet without damage to their hearts or careers.

For 2011 I would like a pony some hard SF. And some literary fiction that's clear as a clean wineglass. And dense, chewy, slightly breathless fairytales. And to read about the First World War. I'm aware that I may have to write some of this myself to get it. But y'know, if you have some? Hook a buddy up.

The 2010 Grand Metrics

Second in the series of posts, now that I have some lunch in front of me.

Finished Novels:

N/A

Unfinished Novels:

Light, which is the wrong title (~100 and two or three pages of notes and images)
The Enchanted Generation (~2,000 and twelve pages of notes, quotes, and plotting)
Indestructible (seven pages of notes and an opening I keep rewriting and rewriting and rewriting)
Saturnalia (13,700)
Kingdoms of Rain (barest notes)

Novel Rewrites on Above:

2

Novels Sold:

It pleases me to be able to just have this metric, y'know? :) Anyways, 1.

Finished Novellas:

N/A

Unfinished Novellas:

"When Your Number Isn't Up"

Finished Short Stories:

"Stay"
"The Closet Monster" (technically a novelette, actually, but I'm not making a new category for that.)

Unfinished Short Stories:

"Small Dark Movie of Your Life"
"The Right People"
"Shine a Light"

Short story Submissions: 3. Isn't that sad?

Acceptances: 2.

Rejections: 1.

Other responses: 0

Awaiting response: 0

Short Stories Published:

"Mister Oak" in Realms of Fantasy, February 2010 (release December 2009).
"A Thousand" in On Spec, Spring 2010.

Other Neat Things: Honourable mentions in the Year's Best anthos -- I remember two in the Dozois Year's Best SF and I think there was one in the Datlow.
I am starting to do interviews, in both the "Here's a writer!" and the "Here's an editor!" capacity.
A few things on the Locus Recommended Reads list this year; I think it was mostly Shadow Unit work.
First literary festival appearance!
Having my work not just taught at the university level, but mentioned/discussed in a scholarly book (!) about renderings of Toronto in fiction (Imagining Toronto, by the fabulous Amy Lavender Harris). Like, holy. :)
The matter of a certain Locus magazine novel sale announcement.
Really, it's mostly that I sold a book, and all the things that follow. *g*

Poems written: 2

Poems sold: 2. Go me.

Poems Published: 1.

Award nominations: 0

Words Total: 33,700 MS Word. Lightest year...ever.


This was not a great year for writing work. It was gobbled up by everything else in life: moving house, rewriting Above, the Dayjob and dancing and exploring and shows, projects and passions and the general social whirl. I can't actually be sorry about this, or even pretend to. There's work, even work you love, and then there's life. There's also the time and energy that's taken up by authoring; the business end of writing. The strategy and project planning and publicity and all the stuff that isn't actually putting words on a page. This is not to be discounted.

I have slowed. I do not work as fast as I used to, not by far, and I don't think it's a bad thing. What comes out is denser and tighter and more layered and smart and strong than it ever used to be. It just takes a long time to come together, and I spend a lot of time standing in the water, looking down, watching the shapes of the proverbial koi fish flick about before reaching in for something.

That's why there are so many novel projects with "and here's a bunch of notes" sitting up there. Most of this year, I just spent sitting very quietly with a fishing line in my hand, and watching. Waiting.

It's coming, and it'll come.

I would like to write some more short stories this year. They take forever these days, but I miss them very much. And I would also like to do a little more poetry, since I seem to be writing poetry again; there's room for striving in that form, for figuring things out. Also, my sentence-level work and...sense of microstructure, I guess? Are slogging through a major skill jump. I'm starting to figure out how to do it better, but I'm still fairly mired in the place where I can see it looking wrong, but can't put it together right reliably, and have been for a year. This has probably come of too much editing. I'm hoping to sort that one out this year too.

I would like to do less authoring and more writing this year. I think those things got out of whack for a bit there.

Most of all, really? I want a challenge. I work best when there's something just out of reach.

Stay tuned; appraisal of these sorta-goals in 364 days.