A couple of folks have asked, so I’m finally putting together my wrap-up post for 2016: what I wrote, what was published, and what I read.
WRITING
Not much to report on this front. 2016 was not my most consistent year for creating new content. I didn’t blog much, and I didn’t really track how much writing I was doing, other than knowing that there were a majority of months where I didn’t write or edit at all. I finished a couple of stories, including “Chasing May” which sold to the anthology Kepler’s Cowboys from Hadrosaur Productions. I sent out a few attempts at getting reprints sold, as well, but not much came of that. (Admittedly, I didn’t make the strongest effort I could possibly have made.)
PUBLISHING
2016 saw the release of three anthologies with my work included:
- “Threshold” appeared in One Thousand Words For War from CBAY Books
- “Stress Cracks” appeared in Galactic Games from Baen (My first professional-rate story sale!)
- “Yeti” appeared in Robbed of Sleep, Volume 4 from Troy Blackford.
I also sold one story, the aforementioned “Chasing May,” which releases in just a few weeks from this writing.
READING
I set myself a variety of reading challenges in 2016. I managed to complete a few of them.
On Goodreads, I challenged myself to read 100 books. I read 105.
Here’s the breakdown of what I read:
- Fiction: 97 books
- 4 anthologies
- 1 noir
- 2 horror
- 1 fantasy
- 1 single-author collection (1 urban fantasy)
- 17 graphic novels
- 11 super-hero
- 4 YA adventure
- 1 YA comedy
- 1 comic strip collection
- 12 magazines (all issues of Lightspeed magazine)
- 43 novels
- 1 crime
- 1 mystery
- 1 noir
- 1 Fantasy
- 1 historical fiction
- 1historical fantasy
- 2historical romance
- 3historical urban fantasy
- 3alternate history
- 3 horror
- 1 literary
- 4 pulp adventure
- 2 science fiction
- 13 urban fantasy
- 1 YA urban fantasy
- 1 YA science fiction
- 8 novellas
- 2 horror
- 3 fantasy
- 1 science fiction
- 1 urban fantasy
- 1 mystery
- 1 picture book
- 1 playscript
- 10 short stories published as stand-alone ebooks
- 4 urban fantasy
- 3 mystery
- 1 modern romance
- 1 thriller
- 1 historical fantasy
- 4 anthologies
- Non-Fiction: 8 books
- 5 Memoir/biography
- 2 History
- 1 Writing Advice
Other Book Stats:
# of Authors/Editors: 86 (including graphic novel artists); 34 of these were female authors. (I didn’t do a good job of tracking other sub-group metrics, such as writers of color, queer writers, etc. I’m going to make a better effort this year.)
Shortest Book Read: 20 pages (Forbid the Sea by Seanan McGuire)
Longest Book Read: 496 (Feedback by Mira Grant)
(Interesting that the shortest and longest read were by the same author, albeit one under a pen-name.)
Total # of pages read: 24064
Average # of pages per book: 229
Format Summary:
- 4 audiobooks
- 28 ebooks (5 Nook, 23 Kindle)
- 73 print
- 17 hardcovers
- 56 softcovers
On my Livejournal, I challenged myself to read 365 short stories (1 per day, basically), but I only managed 198 this year. I did not read as many anthologies or single-author collections cover-to-cover as I have in previous years.
Those 198 stories appeared in:
- 5 Magazines
- Asimov’s
- Cemetary Dance
- Daily Science Fiction
- Disturbed Digest
- Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
- Lightspeed Magazine
- One Story
- One Teen Story
- The Dark
- The Strand
- Three Slices
- Unbound
- 10 Anthologies
- Candle in the Attic
- Clockwork Phoenix 5
- Christmas at the Mysterious Bookshop
- Dark and Dangerous Things III
- Ghost in the Cogs
- In Sunlight or in Shadow (Stories based on the paintings of Edward Hopper)
- Robbed of Sleep Vol 4
- Shattered Shields
- 1 Single-Author Collection
- Two Tales of the Iron Druid by Kevin Hearne
- 8 Stand-alone (self-pubbed or publisher-pubbed in e-format)
- Seanan McGuire (mostly from her website)
- Jordan L. Hawk (email newsletter)
- Lawrence Block (purchased in e-format via Amazon)
Those 198 stories were written by 166 different authors. 82 of those were women (again, didn’t do a good job of tracking any other author-identifying metrics). The work was published by 26 different editors, roughly (there were a few for whom I’m not sure who the editor was / who to credit).
So there you have it: my writing, publishing and reading, by the numbers, for 2016. (I was going to include other media consumed, like music, movies, and television, but I didn’t do as good of a job compiling those numbers in 2016. Oh well!)