2015 in Review
New Year’s Eve, and you know what that means? Happy birthday to me. Yes, indeed, I am 41 years old today and this is my 7th yearly review post. Time marches only one way, my friends…
I’ve been hugely blog-lazy this year. There are still many authors blogging very effectively, but it’s not quite the standard tool of authorial public relations that it was at one time. A lot of my day to day activity has now moved to twitter, I’ve gone over the various stages of the publishing process in the past and have little to add, and I’m less inclined to vomit my opinions at length onto the internet, having done so enough in the past and been surprised and outraged not to see the world change too much as a result. I still follow the various controversies that spring up but when it comes to contributing, I dunno, it seems like there are better things to do with my time. I’ll certainly keep the blogging going for significant announcements and the occasional review, but it’ll probably only bubble away for the foreseeable future. We’ll see…
A YEAR IN BOOKSELLING – The First Law and its sequels roll inexorably on, it would appear, and I’m told the 6 books have now sold over 3 million copies in all languages and formats, though hard data is always surprisingly hard to come by. Meanwhile I released not 1 but 2 books in a year for the first (and probably last) time, and both Half the World and Half a War made the top 5 on the Sunday Times Bestseller list. I did a load of travelling, touring and events, including visits to Australia, America, Russia, Germany, Spain, Poland, Italy, and a week’s touring in the UK. Some was great, some probably less worthwhile, and I’ll definitely be scaling the events back next year in a bid to get more work done. I actually won some awards this year, would you believe – A Locus award for Best YA Novel for Half a King, and another for best Novelette for Tough Times All Over, as well as the Schwabischer Lindwyrm for, well, showing up, I guess. That one comes with a very comely 5 kg bronze statuette, though it did trigger a security alert at Stuttgart Airport.
A YEAR IN BOOK WRITING – What with the releases and the touring it’s been a slightly strange, piecemeal year on the writing front. Jan and Feb were spent finishing off Half a War, which needed a lot of editing (much of it done on the road in Australia). Then I had a lot of trips and travelling around the two book releases, in between which I was writing the last four or five stories to complete my collection Sharp Ends. Then, over the last few months, I’ve been working up ideas for a new trilogy in the world of the First Law, and starting to experiment with the first few chapters, which is showing some promise in between my traditional and entirely predictable slumps into pessimistic despondency. It’s a strange thing – no matter how many books you write you never really feel fully equipped for the one you’re writing.
TV and FILM – Once again I’ve watched a metric shed-load of TV, most of it good to some degree. I think this year has been notable for my personal method of consumption shifting from part DVD to almost exclusively streaming via Netflix and Amazon Prime, with quite a lot of what I’ve watched being Netflix or Amazon originals. The landscape shifts, indeed it does. An eclectic set of personal favourites have included The Walking Dead, Hell on Wheels, Black Sails, Vikings, Sense8, Peaky Blinders, Attack on Titan, The Bridge (original obvs), The Good Wife, Suits, Fargo, Narcos, Gomorrah, Gotham.
What with the kids and everything the cinema doesn’t happen too often. I felt The Force Awakens walked a very fine line between all kinds of conflicting demands to deliver a hugely entertaining film that actually felt like Star Wars again even if, at times, it perhaps felt a little too much like Star Wars. But my film of the year had to be the gobsmacking Mad Max: Fury Road, a tour de force of action and design which somehow managed to be edge-of-the-seat involving without really having a plot, performances or even a script. Very much looking forward to the Hateful Eight and the Revenant in the new year, though. I’ve always loved me a good western…
GAMES – Blog laziness has meant that I’ve failed to review much of what I’ve played, but it’s been a decent year, particularly strong in the open-world roleplaying department. I actually thought the game version of Mad Max, though a little repetitive and Assassin’s Creed-y, was a nice effort with some great visuals and atmosphere . Also Assassin’s Creed-y was Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, the first Assassin’s Creed I’ve played since the rather horrible Assassin’s Creed 3. They really do make too many of these, but Syndicate was a big improvement – a nice imagining of Victorian London and a choice of more interesting central characters (including, gasp, a woman) giving it a bit more zip, even if the framing story still seems more of a lame-ing story and the use of historical characters like crime-fighting Darwin and investigative reporting Dickens rather set the teeth on edge. There was plenty to like about Metal Gear Solid V, the latest from famous maverick video game auteur Hideo Kojima – with some awesome visuals by ace Hideo Kojima, genuinely rewarding and varied tactical espionage action worked out by genius Hideo Kojima, and several of expert Hideo Kojima’s best ultra-dramatic set piece dramatic sequences that you don’t play but just watch, mostly. Unfortunately Kojima’s incomprehensible plotting, Kojima’s intensely tiresome adolescent focus on sweaty boobs, and Kojima’s endless trumpeting of his own name dampened my enthusiasm considerably. My third best of the year has got to be Bloodborne, which successfully took the ultra-challenging Dark Souls formula into cosmic horror territory with some tweaks that improved playability and atmosphere without losing the ultra-difficulty and sense of crushing darkness we all so enjoy. My second best would be Fallout 4, a cynical post-apocalyptic setting I’ve always loved and Bethesda’s most detailed world yet. Bags of content and hugely enjoyable in the early and middle games, it was somewhat let down by a lacklustre and limited central plot and an endgame that rather artlessly revealed its own total lack of choices. Which leaves, as you may well already have guessed, drum roll please, The Witcher 3 as my game of the year. I didn’t even review it at the time I was so busy with other stuff, and I played it too long ago to have a huge amount to say now, but I think it may be the best effort I’ve ever seen at combining open world and free will for the player with convincing characters and central narrative. I found the actual gameplay a little limited, after a while it became way too easy, but those criticisms aside it was flipping brilliant. A truly vast world but packed with detail, and with the kind of meaningful coherence you rarely see in a video game (maybe as a result of it being a literary world adapted, rather than a world devised purely for a game). It also featured some amazing, expressive character designs and some clever plotting with real moments of high drama. You also have to admire the developer’s cottage industry ethos and fan-friendly attitude. Two thumbs up.
WHISKY – Been a bit of a year for blends, with Taketsuru 12, Hibiki 12 and 17, and Ballantine’s 21 all scratching that smooth, light, easy-drinking itch while still retaining plenty of character. Ardbeg always works for me though this year’s Perpetuum wasn’t a patch on previous special releases like Supernova or Ardbog. Bruichladdich Black Art also hit the spot in a big way for a big, complicated, relatively lightly peated Islay.
THE YEAR AHEAD – 2016 looks like a different sort of year again, with much preparation, exploration and experimentation. Sharp Ends was finished a while back and is due out in the US and UK at the end of April. Probably there’ll be a few UK events for that, and it looks like I’ll be returning to my familiar haunt of Aviles for Celsius Festival in July, but otherwise I’m trying to keep the overseas events to a minimum so I can concentrate on getting my new trilogy up and running. I’ve already got some relatively solid ideas together for that, and have written an experimental first few chapters to try the characters on for size. Rather than planning exhaustively right away I’m aiming at an approach more similar to what I did with the First Law – work up some ideas, experiment with some scenes, revise and refine the character’s voices, work up some more ideas, refine some more, live with it and see how I feel. In an ideal world I’d like to roughly draft all three books before fine-tuning, revising and editing each for publication, as I think that’ll give me the best chance at the most complete and coherent trilogy, as well as a controlled and timely publication schedule, but I expect that’ll depend on how fast I can get this first book written, and it may be that other mysterious projects which have long been bubbling away in the background will boil over and require a certain amount of attention. Either way, there’s going to be a fair gap between Sharp Ends and my next book, but hopefully that’ll be offset by faster publication later. I shall keep you informed…
Happy new year, readers!
Fallout 4
I’ve been playing video games a while (*cough* 35 years or so *cough*), so I actually fondly remember the ol’ isometric turn-based first Fallout, which in the late 90s presented one of the most original and interesting game worlds I’d ever experienced, a strange mix of retro and post-apocalypse with bags of atmosphere, wit, and moral ambiguity. […]
Sharp Ends US Cover
Following last week’s release of the UK cover for my collection of short stories Sharp Ends, here’s the cover for the US edition, coming from Orbit on 26th April… Daresay it will still feature a map internally not to mention, of course, just the same entirely wonderful 13 short stories from the world of the First […]
Sharp Ends UK Cover
Those wonderful folks at Gollancz have released the cover for my forthcoming collection of short stories, Sharp Ends, and it looks a little something like this… Artwork by Dave Senior, designed as always by the brilliant Laura Brett. For those who don’t know, it contains thirteen stories, all set in the world of the First […]
