This isn't really a proper review. There's too much to review and I am bound to get it jumbled up. The only way to proceed is to keep it short and not try to cover many topics.
I had twelve books published in 2022, averaging one a month. The most important of these by far is my Centipede Press collection,
The Senile Pagodas, a book of tribute stories to authors I admire. It is starting to get some good reviews. I waited ten years for this collection to be published; the wait was worth it.
So much for print books... When it comes to ebooks, my most important publication of the year was
The Rhys Hughes Fantastic MEGAPACK® published by Wildside Press, a showcase of my short stories from the past three decades. This is the first of three such volumes and taken together they will form a very good retrospective collection of my work.
I was translated into Serbian and published in Belgrade.
Postmoderni Mornar was translated by Tereza Bojković and issued by Partizanska knjiga. This was a project supported by the Welsh Literature Exchange, who also funded my partner's university residency in Aberystwyth as part of the Charles Wallace Fellowship (but that's a different story).
I also sold several books including a fantasy adventure novel that I finished writing just before the pandemic struck. And another of my books has been chosen for translation (into German this time). I sold many short stories, even more poems, and a few articles.
I finished writing a novel,
The Hippy Quixote, that I plan on sending to an agent very soon (I finally seem to have acquired a new agent, at least for this one book, and he's a very notable agent indeed). I wrote forty short stories, hundreds of flash fictions (500 in the case of
this book) and countless poems, many of which were published, many of which haven't even yet been submitted anywhere.
I also started writing a surreal thriller, Average Assassins, that I hope to finish in the first half of next year. I have outlined most of rhe chapters already and written the first. Writing more novels is a resolution for the future. I have many planned. It's just a case of working through my list methodically. When Average Assassins is finished I will probably return to work on my fantasy novel Unevensong, which I haven't worked on for almost thirty years. And after that, it is high time I returned to my incomplete big novel, The Clown of the New Eternities, but realistically that one might have to wait until 2024.
Maybe the most significant aspect of this year in terms of my writing is that I finally wrote my 1000th story. This was a target I decided to aim for a long time ago, never expecting that I would achieve it, but in the summer it actually happened. My 1000th story is called 'Tangents' and is more of a novella (containing flash fictions) than a regular short story. It will hopefully be published in Brazil in 2023.
I had always said that when I reached my 1000th story I would give up writing short stories. The thousand stories taken together would form one immense story-cycle called PANDORA'S BLUFF and the last story in the cycle would feed into the first, forming an endless loop. Well, the loop exists now but I have gone beyond the thousand and my vision for the story-cycle has undergone a modification. The cycle will be as long as it turns out to be.
I began the year in Sri Lanka and I spent 2022 in that country, in India, Egypt, and Wales. I am now back in India and returning to Sri Lanka one week from now. I have travelled a great deal this year and seen many amazing things. I can say it's been one of the best years of my life.
Here's to 2023, and a great year to all of you out there!
So much to blog about! I am very neglectful of my blog these days. Social media has taken over and made blogging redundant for the most part. Nonetheless, it is probably a good idea to occasionally keep my blog topped up, so to speak...
I will be concise and mention that my novella, My Rabbit's Shadow Looks like a Hand, which has only been a print book for the past year, is now also an ebook. It's also going to be translated into German and published in Germany, something I am very pleased about.
Conversely, my triptych of three tales known as The Mermaid Variations, which has only been an ebook for the past ten years, is now also a print book. It has already been translated, into Portuguese, and in fact these stories first appeared in that language, long ago.
My collection of linked short stories, The Postmodern Mariner, has been translated into Serbian and published in Serbia in a very nice edition indeed. More about this in a future blog.
I have had a lot of work published in a lot of places and I have signed contracts with several publishers for work to be published in the near future. One of these contracts is for a fantasy novel I finished writing a few years ago. I will provide more details soon, after the publisher gives me the go ahead. The novel is a fantasy, as I said above, but more of an absurdist magic realist thing than a typical fantasy, if that doesn't sound too pretentious, set in Africa, Brazil and the Sahara Desert, and very 1920s/30s in tone, a sort of mix of Don Quixote, Beau Geste and Philip José Farmer.
I also have signed a contract for a substantial collection with a notable publisher in the USA. In fact the deal is for three collections. The first one is out already and the others will follow soon. More details in my next blog post. The idea is to reach readers totally unfamiliar with my work who are unlikely to poke around in the obscure corners of the independent press where so many of my stories lurk. Considered together, the three collections will form a very big retrospective of my work.
But now I want to mention a recently-published anthology published here in India by Om Books called Monalisa No Longer Smiles. It includes fiction, non-fiction and poetry. I am delighted that my suite of poems based on Ancient Greek mythology entitled 'Sticky Myths' is presented here in its entirety. The book is extremely well-produced and more information about it can be found here. The idea is that this is going to be the first of a series of such anthologies showcasing the range and diversity of work that can be found in the online Borderless Journal. Edited by Mitali Chavravarty, Borderless Journal has been one of my favourite literary journals for the past few years and I always make it a priority to send my work there. Borderless has already published many of what I consider to be my best humorous poems. Supporting this anthology is a genuine pleasure for me.
One other thing, if you are fast you can catch a free download of my novella The Ghost Loser from any Amazon outlet.
Oh yes, and yesterday I finished writing a new novel called The Hippy Quixote :-)
