Tuesday, December 31, 2024
End of 2024 Review
Writing
In 2024 I wrote 55 stories. Most were very short and can be found in my SECOND HAND HANDS collection. But I did manage a few more substantial pieces:
* 'Masala Island' - a science fiction novella that might turn out to be the first part of a novel. Not sure yet.
* 'Special Treatment' - the first (lengthy) chapter of a new novel that will be a weird Western called THE BOOMERANG GANG.
I also wrote more pieces for various story cycles I am engaged on, including CITY LIFE, which is almost finished, and I began a new fantasy series set in Wales called MY BEASTLY UNCLE. I finished my huge (100,000 words) DABBLER IN DRABBLES project in four volumes. There will be an omnibus edition next year but I have vowed never to write another drabble. This project took up too much of my time and the end result was too small a reward for the effort involved.
I wrote a lot of poems, but I do feel I am rapidly moving out of the poetry phase I have been in for the past five years. My poems are only absurdist ditties anyway. If it wasn't for Borderless Journal regularly publishing them I might have given up already. I note that I have written 2174 poems in total, of which 161 were written when I was younger. I think this is almost enough for anyone.
I wrote only one article and no plays at all. For some reason I lost interest in writing non-fiction. I love writing plays but they are never produced and only rarely published, so my motivation has been lacking somewhat.
Conclusion: a much leaner writing year than last year, but that's hardly a surprise. Last year was excessive.
Published Books
GROWL AT THE MOON (Telos Publishing) was my only trad published book this year. I am very happy with the way it has turned out.
All my other books were self published, but one of them, IN THIS POEM, I think is my best poetry collection so far, for whatever that is worth.
My novella, MY RABBIT'S SHADOW LOOKS LIKE A HAND, was translated into German and published as Der Schatten meines Hasen sieht aus wie eine Hand.
Among anthology appearances, I think that my 'Thirteen Castles South' in INFERNAL MYSTERIES (Egaeus Press) and 'What Actually Happened' in MEDUSA (Flame Tree Publishing) were the two standouts.
As for sales: when it comes to my work trad published in anthologies, I have no idea what the numbers are, but when it comes to my self published books and ebooks, this year was my most profitable so far. I sold 3340 books. My ambition is to sell ten of my books every day. I haven't achieved that, but am inching closer. These figures are still miniscule when compared with big writers out there.
Other Stuff
I began the year in India. I returned to the UK and spent time in Bristol, Birmingham, Exeter, Swansea, Ystalyfera, Aberystwyth and Pontrhyfendegaid. I hiked the whole of the Gower coast and did other hikes in mid Wales. I was a guest of honour at the Podgorica Book Fair in Montenegro and I have been invited back for next year.
Reading
The best novel I read in 2024 was undoubtedly PALE FIRE by Vladimir Nabokov. I had been meaning to read it for decades. Astounding in every way. Getting back into Nabokov last year is the best reading choice I have made for a long time.
The second best novel was THE MAGUS by John Fowles, which despite some passges that dragged, turned out to be a masterpiece.
I was also happy to finally engage with Malcolm Lowry. ULTRAMARINE made me an instant fan. Now I will seek out his other work.
A SEASON IN SINJI by J.L. Carr is the best novel by this writer that I have read so far. AUGUSTUS by John Williams was good, as are all four of his novels (but ultimately STONER is the only essential one).
OMENSETTER'S LUCK by William H. Gass has some of the most incredible dialogue exchanges I have encountered in fiction. Not an easy read as a novel, though.
LIFE IS ELSEWHERE by Milan Kundera might be the best novel I have read by him. My enthusiasm for him has somewhat waned over the years and I wish I had read this one before the others.
A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES by John Kennedy Toole. Brilliant but creaky in parts. I can almost understand why his editors kept pushing for revisions, but they should have published the novel anyway, knowing that he would probably go on to write even better things, and it's a shame he never got the chance to do so.
As for short story collections:
LOST IN THE FUNHOUSE by John Barth is sheer genius. However, I can understand why many people wouldn't like it. The stories tend to be writing about writing. But they are immensely clever.
THE SECRET OF THIS BOOK by Brian Aldiss is a late collection but one of his best. Lots of the stories don't work well but those that do are tremendous and the volume is satisfying as a unit despite the weaker material.
As for non-fiction, only one book really stood out for me this year. THE PREMONITIONS BUREAU by Sam Knight. A good reading year, all in all.
Thursday, December 12, 2024
Dabbler in Drabbles #4
Together, all four volumes contain exactly 1000 drabbles. The first volume has one hundred of them, the second volume two hundred, the third volume three hundred, and the fourth volume four hundred. This is a Pythagorean number sequence and rather nice, I feel.
There is a frame of sorts, but it is contained within the main text. The cyclops Polyphemus is telling the drabbles to the centaur Chiron. Some of the drabbles are told from the viewpoint of Chiron, but it is only Chiron's viewpoint as imagined by Polyphemus, and Polyphemus knows this and allows his imaginary Chiron to know it too, which means that the real Chiron also gets to know it (because he is listening on our behalf). But it gets a lot more complicated than that.
There will be a whacking great big Omnibus edition next year, hardback as well as paperback. I began this project when I was in India just over a year ago. A sensible person would have used those 100,000 words in a novel. Not me, I'm not very sensible. But I did learn something from this project, namely never to write another drabble as long as I live, and I won't.
The covers are geometric and garish. That's how I wanted them. The cover of the Omnibus will be much more pleasing to the eye. So there you have it. DABBLER IN DRABBLES is done!
Wednesday, December 04, 2024
Second Hand Hands
These are mostly brief tales, strange, offbeat, imaginative, inventive and playful fictions featuring ghosts, werewolves, giants, pirates, mutants, spirits, witches, elephants, sentient mirrors and a parade of other odd characters.
I delight in language as well as concepts, in form as well as content, in comedy, tragedy, horror, mystery and paradox. I hope the reader will feel equal delight, or at least some delight, when reading this book, which I believe has a unified sense of timeless weirdness.
It is a collection of concise absurdist fiction (and I still maintain, and always will, that there is a significant difference between absurdism and surrealism).
A complete list of all the stories in the volume can be found on my Aardvark Caesar blog, where I keep a public record of all my books as they appear.
If I had to choose a favourite story among the fifty, I might select 'Candles' or 'So Far Untitled' or 'The Editor'. But there is no requirement for me to choose.
Tuesday, December 03, 2024
Growl at the Moon
I wrote it last year when I was living in India. The idea for the first (lengthy) chapter came to me while I was playing badminton. Everything followed quickly after that. The entire book was written in one month, feverishly, and the frenetic pacing of the writing was responsible for the powerful momentum of the story. That's what I think anyway. But the work was easy, the prose flowed, and I am happiest when projects seem almost to write themselves.
The publisher issued the following summary of the novel to entice readers:
"Bill Bones was a normal human being until he studied under a Mojave Shaman and was transformed into a man-dog called The Growl. Now, driven by a keen sense of justice, The Growl is on the hunt for the villains who killed his boss, newspaperman Ridley Smart and he’ll stop at nothing!
Crossing the deserts and forests of the American continent, The Growl searches for the men he must kill. Along the way he meets more beast-men, more magicians, the avenger Jalamity Kane who is seeking to rid the world of the beast menace, and other dangerous characters, from the artificial to the wild, from the robotic to the demonic.
In the deft hands of Rhys Hughes, this inventive tale becomes a masterpiece of twists and turns, exploring and questioning our definitions of humanity, discovering the very meaning of what life and reality might be."
I am extremely happy with the way this book has turned out. I love the cover and I am delighted it has been published without delays. (Delays are the bane of every writer's life, I imagine). Telos have been marvellous to work with. This is the third book of mine they have published, all of them novels.
I am planning to write two more Weird Westerns in the future. In fact, I have already written the first chapter of the next one, The Boomerang Gang, and I have long had the idea for the one after that, Fists of Fleece. I am sure I will finish both in the next year or two. Whether they will be published by Telos or not when they are ready is another question, a question with an answer that depends on how well Growl at the Moon sells. I hope readers out there will take a chance on it...
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