2017 in Review
Hot damn if it isn’t New Year’s Eve once more. This means I must be 43 today. 11 and a half years since I was first published, but I still feel a little strange describing myself as a writer…
2017. Well, it’s been a gruelling year one way or another. A year of inside-outs and upside-downs and public discourse polarised as never before. Plus a year, for me, of not one but two distracting house moves as we first moved into a new house and then moved out into a rented one while we do building work. At one time these yearly reviews would be a review of the blog itself, but these days I’m not really finding the time to write at length about games or films or tv as I once did (a few lines on twitter seems to suffice) or to vent my self-important opinions about publishing as I once did (I’ve said most of what I’ve got to say and the same old topics seem often to recur) or to explain the business of writing and publishing as I once did (I’ve gone over pretty much every element of it at one time or another), so I guess this is going to be something of a truncated review, focussing mostly on my own progress over the past year.
A YEAR IN BOOKSELLING – It’s been a strange year, as it’s the first since 2013 when I didn’t publish a new book. Odder yet, there’s not going to be a new book from me next year either. My apologies for that, but anyone who’s been following my progress reports will understand the reasons, and I hope that it’ll pay off for me and the readers in the long run and I’ll be hailed as an industry-changing visionary, but it still leaves me feeling a little bit out of the game, so to speak. Still, I went to Worldcon in Helsinki, and Celsius in Aviles, and deals continue to be done internationally and books sold the world over. This is one of the good things about a writing career. It takes time and effort to get books out there, and to make the rights sales, and to build up the readership, but once the machine’s spinning it keeps going (up to a point) without you. Not that I’ve been idle…
A YEAR IN BOOK WRITING – I might not have published a new book, but, well, I did write one, and I did revise another. For anyone who hasn’t been following the blog (you poor benighted fools), I’m writing another adult trilogy set in the First Law world, some thirty years after the end of the original trilogy as the world is moving into a more industrial age, featuring a new generation of central characters while some of the many old bastard roles are filled by familiar characters from the original trilogy and standalones. When I started writing the First Law trilogy, all those many years ago (about 16 years, indeed, of you can believe that), I had no deal, no readers, no expectations of either, and I could just write at my own pace, let the plot unfold and develop the voices of the characters. By the time The Blade Itself was published I was already well over half way through Last Argument of Kings and had the luxury of revising that first book with the endings already well in mind. My feeling with this new trilogy was that to write the best, most coherent series I could, I needed to draft all three books and get to the end of the story, know what was important and what wasn’t before really tightening up that first book and getting it ready to publish. That means, of course, a long and frustrating delay for the first book, but hopefully a much more regular publication schedule thereafter and (most importantly) the best possible end result.
I finished a rough draft of the first book, which is now titled A Little Hatred, at the start of the year, smashed out a rough draft of the second, The Trouble With Peace, in the middle six months of the year (which was exceedingly fast work by my standards), did a first round of revisions to the first book again in October/November, and spent the last month or so coming up with a plan for the third book, with a view to getting underway in earnest in the new year. With any luck I will be issuing further bi-monthly progress reports as things move rapidly forward…
TV and FILM – Film-wise it’s been a pretty feeble year. A lot of marvel superhero fare which was all enjoyable but very marvel-y and quite superhero-ish. Thought the first half hour of Baby Driver was great but then it turned into a more routine caper film. Enjoyed Dunkirk but it didn’t exactly set my loins aflame. Thor: Ragnarok I liked a lot, mind you, maybe because I wasn’t expecting that much. It made me laugh, at least, and Jeff Goldblum was amazing. Logan was great at times, but for a film that sold itself as gritty it went out more than a little soft-centred in the end. Blade Runner 2049 was certainly a fascinating exercise. Amazing visuals, and some great sequences, but also some rather rambling and self-indulgent ones. It certainly worked as a kind of surreal mood piece, but as a thriller, not so much. I’m sad to say The Last Jedi I found a real disappointment after the great reviews. A weird mix of slapstick and sentiment, characters forever surprised, incompetent and overwrought as they endlessly snatch defeat from victory and victory from defeat in tiresome alternation. If I had to pick a film of the year for me it would probably be Paddington 2. It was a hoot. TV has offered more. Black Sails closed out in style: occasionally a bit mad but considering an iffy first season they really delivered something memorable over time. The Man in the High Castle has all the ingredients for something great, the concept, the actors, the styling, but somehow doesn’t deliver much actual story. The Expanse continues to show promise. Narcos continues to be pretty great. Thoroughly enjoyed Ozark as well. I generally like the Netflix/Marvel collaborations but we saw the worst and best of them this year, with the turgid and miscast Iron Fist, the flaccid and baffling Defenders, and the taut and punchy Punisher, in which John Bernthal managed to bring some real complexity to what could have been a very foursquare character. The Crown doesn’t seem like my bag on the face of it, but there was something mesmerising in its understated expense. Great performances. But I think my favourite TV of the year was Mindhunter. Psychological profiling of serial killers doesn’t seem on the face of it the most original subject matter, and I was expecting something chilly and forensic but it was full of humanity, actually, and great characters. Beautifully made.
GAMES – I’ve dialled back the gaming again this year. Partly I’ve been really busy and didn’t want to break the flow. Partly there hasn’t been a lot that I massively wanted to play. Partly I’ve made a decision to just play things I really want to, rather than dabbling with things that in the end don’t interest me all that much just for the hell of it. So let’s see. I kind of liked the baffling Japanese RPG charms of Nier: Automata, but not enough to really mine the further reaches of the game, which is something I understand you’ve got to do. Destiny 2 was sorta like Destiny. But 2. The gunplay is brilliantly involving but in the end the grind gets empty and makes you feel sad inside. My game of the year would have to be Horizon: Zero Dawn. Games sold on their looks often turn out to be clunkers in the gameplay department, but this was a rare one that nailed both, as well as delivering a great world and central character and feeling (increasingly rarely in games) like something pretty original too.
THE YEAR AHEAD – It’s looking like another busy one. Got the building project starting in January and running through until at least August, which will take up a fair bit of my attention. In terms of writing the hope is to get the third book in the trilogy drafted by the end of the year and make a good start on the editing and revision of the first, with a view to getting it published maybe in summer 2019. No promises, of course, and it may be that other projects creep up and get in the way, but that’s the hope…
Happy new year, readers!
