The Spoons That Are My Ears!

It's the end of the year again and because I have given up doing 'end of the year reviews' (supposedly) I'll keep this very brief. I'm sure other people, including yourself, have better things to do at this time than read end-of-the-year reviews.

I began the year in Africa in idyllic surroundings (in the uplands of Kirinyaga in Kenya) and with luck I will be spending more and more time there in the future and in other parts of that continent (Mombasa is one of my favourite places in the world). But my travels aren't really relevant to a blog concerned with literary matters.

So what did I achieve in 2018 regarding my writing efforts?

Books Published = 3
* How Many Times?
* The Honeymoon Gorillas
* The Early Bird Catches the Worm but the Wise Worm Stays in Bed

Books Accepted = 2
* Mombasa Madrigal
* The Court of Very Serious but Fictional Crimes

(With another few books currently in negotiation including Arms Against a Sea, Comfy Rascals and The Wistful Wanderings of Perceval Pitthelm).

Stories Accepted = ?
I don't keep count of these but it's about 30

Stories Written = 28

Articles Written = 11

Plays Written = 5 (only started writing plays in the last month of the year, so I am very pleased with this total).

This brings my total of books published up to 47 since the year 1995.
909 stories in total since the year 1989.
22 articles in total since last year (when I started again from the beginning).
Next year I am hoping to have more books published (of course) including my first non-fiction book (Bullshit with Footnotes), but I am also hoping to have at least one of my plays performed on stage, radio or even as a film. We shall see :-)

As for reading... I read an incredible amount of superb fiction and non-fiction including Malgudi Days by R.K. Narayan, one of my favourite ever short story collections, and No Picnic on Mount Kenya by Felice Benuzzi, one of my favourite true stories of adventure.

But two books among the dozens and dozens stood out. The Short Plays of Harold Pinter, which inspired me to begin writing plays again (I had wanted to write plays when I was much younger), and Palm-of-the-Hand Stories by Yasunari Kawabata, certainly a supreme achievement in the art of the very short story.

That's all. Onward to the year 2019 !!!!! :-)