2024 in Review
Happy Birthday to me, happy birthday to me, happy birthday dear me-eee, and bloody hell but I am 50 years old today, my friends. 5 decades. Half a century. Where did it all go? I still feel young and exciting, but I must now accept that it’s eighteen years since The Blade Itself was published. I have an adult child, on the cusp of leaving home, and two others not far behind. When did that happen? Truly, we all will slide into the grave with a plaintive whimper of, ‘but I was just getting started . . .’ My wife Lou has done some new author photos to commemorate this vital milestone, as I inevitably transition from dangerous bad boy of British fantasy, subverting tropes with my every breath, to tedious dinosaur blocking up the publishing schedule with another overlong, self-indulgent tome just like the last overlong, self-indulgent tome, and droning away on panels at conventions about how influential I’ve been, and that time I had dinner with George RR Martin.
With the right lighting, I can still pass for 49! Ah, well. As someone young and exciting once wrote: Still alive . . .
A YEAR IN BOOKSELLING –When you negotiate a publishing deal, it includes dates for the publication of the books in question, and though no one takes those dates extremely seriously, they can take on a life of their own. So it is that, though I finished the writing on The Devils in 2023, and the last bits of editing at the start of 2024, and advance reader copies have been going out, being read, and in some cases even reviewed, for quite a while already, the book won’t actually be OUT until May 6th (in the UK) or 13th (in the US), 2025 (in hardcover, ebook, and audiobook read by the incomparable Steven Pacey). That’ll be the longest gap ever in my publishing schedule, as it goes, 3 and a half years since The Wisdom of Crowds came out in September 2021, when the book world was still very much affected by Covid restrictions. We could’ve pushed it through faster, but my new US publisher wanted plenty of time to prepare the ground for a new series, and I didn’t want to rush the editing or the art, and it would have meant a longer wait for the next book (which hopefully now will come out maybe 15 months or so after the Devils, which feels a much more comfortable gap).
No new book from me in 2024, therefore, but there will of course be much more bookselling going on next year, around the publication of The Devils in May. Subscription models and special editions continue to become a bigger and bigger thing, especially in the genre world, so we’re going to end up with a few different editions of the book, and these won’t just be a sprayed edge or a numbered signature page these will be totally different art styles and bindings. The standard US and UK hardcovers from Tor and Gollancz respectively will have a map and set of sumptuous internal illustrations of the central characters from Joel Daniel Phillips of Lit Escalates (4 colour on the endpapers, 4 monochrome internally). Really pleased with how these have come out, based around Byzantine icons very appropriate to the book, and think they’ll make the whole thing feel that bit more special:
We’re hoping there’s going to be some merchandise available based around these as the time draws nearer. Then there are also going to be at least two signed limited editions with totally different art and cover approaches, one tending towards classic epic fantasy and another with more of a gothic horror vibe, both of which will have their own custom endpapers. I’ve already signed some 12000 sig sheets for those, each one lovingly pored over, of course. There may even be some super duper special fine press letterpress editions coming later in the year. More on all of that nearer publication date. Looks like I’ll be touring bookshops in the UK for a week at the start of May and then very likely will be doing some bookshop events in the US for the first time in, what, 10 years, when Half a King came out? I’m also gonna be in Spain for Celsius festival in July (along with quite the list of international guests this year including Robin Hobb, Brandon Sanderson, NK Jemisin, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Catriona Ward and Jay Kristoff).
A YEAR IN BOOK WRITING – It’s been a reasonable year on the writing front as I started drafting the sequel to The Devils just before year end and I’ve now done a really rubbish first draft of 2 parts out of 3 – about 125,000 words (though not necessarily in quite the right order yet). The overall plot shape is more or less there but the characters are still working out what they need to be. I’ve been flailing around somewhat with this one, trying to work out what it is as I’m writing it. I’ve been taking this – let’s dignify it by calling it a gardening approach – more as I’ve got older, and especially with these books which are more self-consciously wild and chaotic than my First Law stuff. Bang out a first draft, see what you’ve got, then revise it, pare it back and impose some structure on it once you’ve worked out what it needs to be (with help from a couple of very good editors). Having done this a few times now I have faith that it’ll come together, but it certainly can be worrying feeling like you’re working on an out of control pile of shit for a lot of the drafting process. Still, it was ever thus, really. Love the books you’ve written, hate the one you’re writing. I felt much the same way about the Devils when I was writing it, or indeed Best Served Cold or Red Country, and they came out fine in the long run (if not to say magisterial works that shall resound through history). My hope is in the next month or so I’ll be able to sharpen up the second part, rewrite the first a bit, confer with my editors on what I’ve got, then plan the last part, and by that point I’ll hopefully feel more confident about the whole thing and can finish up a first draft relatively quickly. That should give me a good few months to edit and revise with a view to being largely finished towards the end of 2025, and publishing August/September 2026. We shall see.
TV AND FILM – These days I do spend maybe a third to a half of my time working on various film and TV projects, and though there’s frustratingly little I can say about those, and frustratingly few of them have actually made it to the screen as yet, it does make it a little awkward to hammer other people’s work, so I’ll just pick out a few things from the year that I’ve particularly enjoyed. In film, the standouts would be Dune II – just a brilliant adaptation of some really difficult source material with some incredible sound and visual design. Hard to think of many things that have brought a truly alien culture so convincingly to life. Then there’s Wicked, which wouldn’t normally be my cup of tea but I just found to be a real riot. Cracking central performances and every detail meticulously polished.
On the TV side, Slow Horses started a little slow but gets better and better with each season, The Bear started amazing but though I liked this third season it didn’t reach the highs of the second. Day of the Jackal was good but went off at the end and perhaps took itself a bit too seriously by comparison with Black Doves which I thought covered similar ground and benefited from a bit of wit and warmth, and Ben Whishaw, who’s just great in everything. Shogun was lavish, atmospheric, powerful stuff. The second season of Arcane was at times a bit too packed, but when it slowed down and took its time it could be truly outstanding. Interview With the Vampire is just a brilliantly acted and arranged adaptation jam packed with awesome moments. It’s a tough call but I’d say my favourite TV of the year was probably Industry, which is really coming of age now in its third season. A sharp, ruthless, shocking meditation on class and wealth and greed.
GAMES – Honestly a bit of a muted year on the gaming front. Dragon Age: The Veilguard was kinda … fine, I guess? The settings were great and there were certainly some cool sequences but a lot of the dialogue felt exceedingly on the nose and I found the gameplay became pretty repetitive over time. All a bit too ‘gamey’, if that makes sense – sometimes you felt you were looking at a barely disguised flowchart of location design and dialogue options. It was one of those where my interest flagged and I slightly limped over the finish line with more a whimper than a bang. I enjoyed both the Hellblade games as short, intense experiences. Very filmic, original, high concept fare and stunning to look at. I was an enormous fan of Frostpunk so I’d been greatly looking forward to Frostpunk 2, and it was good, really interesting in places and I applaud the developer’s efforts to take it somewhere slightly new, but in the end it wasn’t as raw and impactful as the first instalment. Shadow of the Erdtree, the DLC for Elden Ring certainly had some amazing moments but a lot of it felt weirdly empty and undeveloped by comparison with the main game. So though I’ve only started playing it in the last few weeks, I’d say my personal game of the year has been Helldivers 2. It’s really not my sort of game in the main, but it does exactly what it says on the tin with much sense of humour, and I’ve been very much enjoying bringing democracy to the galaxy at gunpoint along with some friends, and in fact my son (don’t you dare suggest that he’s better at it than me, though).
THE YEAR AHEAD – Various Film and TV projects bubble away on the back burner and may need further attention as they move towards getting made – or more likely not – and there are a couple of new ones I’m likely to be taking on, but the publication of The Devils in May will of course be the big professional thing on my horizon. Fingers crossed that it will be an earth shattering sensation. Let me leave you with what Tamsyn Muir, author of Gideon the Ninth had to say about the book:
“The Devils is just an incredibly fun, incredibly action-packed and, by the end, incredibly affecting book. It slammed the living shit out of me.”
And who among us, after all, doesn’t want their living shit slammed out? Happy New Year, you beautiful bastards, and (for yet another time) let’s hope this one is better than the last…
