A Brief Round up of 2015 & Looking Forward to 2016

First, a shoutout to Bhavya for helping me with the lovely banners on the homepage. They look wonderful!

2015 is almost gone and it’ll be time to ring in 2016.

Life:

2015 was a good year, in most respects–the first year without a day job, where I could just create. Well, and do half of a masters degree and a few school visits. Still. The first year without a 9-5 office job. I don’t know if I’ll be able to do that forever, but I really appreciated having a brief break. I got to travel a lot, going to Hong Kong, the Isle of Skye, California (twice, for 7 weeks in total), Edinburgh and London a few times, Glasgow, and Belgium. I got to see my family and friends a lot. My health was great. My fitness improved. I had a much better work-life balance. I went to the gym, cooked, cleaned more. Saw friends without feeling guilty that I wasn’t writing instead. I feel very lucky for this year.

It was also sad. I lost my dad in March, and grief ended up tingeing the whole year, affecting me in unexpected ways. Most of the time, I function just fine, but I still miss him a lot and I always will. My brother Ian found a bunch of old recordings my dad had and digitised them, including a song of him singing about love. Though the song made me cry a lot, it also means that now I’ll always be able to open it up and hear my dad say “I love you.” I also had to realise that, no matter what, I’m an anxious person, even when everything is going pretty well. I could win the lottery and have the most perfect life possible, and I might still get panic attacks. It’s not situational; it’s me. I’m still searching for better ways of coping with that and being more mindful, but at the moment, it’s manageable.

Reading:

I read 75 books this year (plus beta read at least 6 more). Here’s a few book/series favourites:

Fool’s Quest by Robin Hobb. I’m dying to know what happens next! I love the Fitz and the Fool, Bree, Shun–everyone. Can never talk rationally about these books.
More Than This by Patrick Ness. Just read this and it was fantastic. It’s better if you go into it knowing nothing.
Ariah by B.R. Sanders. Out through a smaller press, Sanders deserves wider recognition for her work. This was a great fantasy book about relationships and coming into your own. Lots of queer and polyamorous characters.
Far From You by Tess Sharpe. A tightly-plotted thriller with a bisexual, drug addict main character. An emotional punch to the gut.
The first three Dublin Murder crime books by Tana French. One of my favourite new authors I’ve picked up this year. I also really love her approach of writing each book as a standalone, but a secondary character in one becomes the protagonist of the next.
The Grisha Trilogy by Leigh Bardugo. I’d read the first one when it came out but devoured all three in quick successful. Russian-inspired fantasy with lush worldbuilding and an excellent cast of characters.
The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North. Beautifully written and just fantastic. Touches on similar themes to David Mitchell’s work.
The District Ballet Company books by Katherine Locke. Ballet romance, like Center Stage or Stage Beauty but better. One character is in recovery for an eating disorder and the other lost a leg, so it looks at both mental health and physical disability very delicately. Plus, the romance is so sweet.
On the Edge of Gone by Corinne Duyvis. This is out next year and you won’t want to miss it. Has an autistic, half-Dutch and half-Surinamese girl. The earth is dying and everyone needs to leave–but not everyone has a space.
A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab. I read this in a fevered few days during a pretty hard time. It was the perfect escapist fantasy I needed.
In Case of Emergency by Courtney Moreno. My favourite of the books I judged for the Bisexual Book award, about a bisexual EMT and her relationships.
The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins. The thriller that everyone has read, but I raced through it and enjoyed it thoroughly.
The Winner’s Crime by Marie Rutkoski. The sequel to The Winner’s Curse. One of my favourite ongoing fantasy series. It’s secondary but has no magic, and takes a very good look at power play in politics and slavery.
The Gracekeepers by Kirsty Logan. A beautiful, lyrical book about a circus that travels around on a ship. The sea levels have raised so high that land is scarce. Sort of like Pantomime meets Waterworld, if you’ll excuse me using my own book as a comp title.
The Silver Metal Lover by Tanith Lee. Older fantasy about a spoiled girl who falls for an android and also finds herself and what she believes in. Really enjoyed it.

Writing:

I realised recently that 2015 was a year where I worked on basically every single one of my books in some way. This year I:

Finished drafting Shattered Minds (the option book after False Hearts) & edited it twice (about 70,000 words)
Did a big structural edit on Masquerade as a result of beta feedback (about 45,000 words)
Did a slightly smaller but still significant structural and line edit on False Hearts, plus copyedits and proofing (25,000 words, maybe)
Wrote two short stories: “Wolf Teeth” and “Through the Eyes of the Bluebird”; hoping to have news on these soon (10,000 words)
Re-proofed and did minor textual changes on both Pantomime & Shadowplay for the re-release (minimal word count changes).
I’m halfway through a collaborative book (around 25,000 words written by me)
Did a lot of research and just barely (re-)started Betwixt Book (3,000 words)
Have done some initial planning and the start of another thriller (4,000 words)
Have played around with a sample for a novella (5,000 words)

Total: 187,000 words, plus a fair amount of editing and massaging plenty of other prose. That’s definitely a bump up from previous years, where I had to juggle the day job. I also tried to be pretty good about blogging and had a fair amount of admin. So a decently busy year, but way less overwhelming than past years and busier with doing my dream job.

Next year:

I always try to make realistic resolutions rather than setting myself up for failure. I am being a bit ambitious this time, though.

Life:

Focus better on things. If I’m watching a film I should watch. the. film. Not half-watch it while puttering around on the internet and then barely remember what happened. Read without my phone within constant reach. Stop mindlessly switching between social media sites because I’m bored or anxious, but rather because I want to be there. I’m also going to try doing social media free Sundays. I feel much more grounded when I unplug for a bit.

Don’t Google myself or search my name on social media. I’ve even asked a friend to do it for me and send through nice reviews, so they’ll come my way. This ties into not caring as much what people think. I liked writing False Hearts. I’m proud of it. It’s not perfect; no book is. Negative reviews are fine, but I’ll be a lot better off not reading them.

Keep going to the gym and eating pretty well. I had plenty of gaps, such as when I was travelling, but on the whole the food I ate was healthier, I cooked more, and I ate a lot more fruits and vegetables. I went vegetarian again in April and don’t regret it, even if Quorn gets a bit tiring sometimes. Also: I plan to eat slower. I tend to gobble my food rather than slow down and enjoy it. I want to do some more weight lifting this year, too.

Try to relax more and do more mindfulness activities. I got three colouring books for Christmas, so I’ll try and meditate and let my mind go blank when I do them. I’m also taking an art class starting in January. I used to love doing art but it slipped the last few years. I’m also learning languages via Duolingo.

Overall, though, I’m really looking forward to 2016. False Hearts will be released, and Pantomime & Shadowplay will be re-released in paperback. I’ll probably cut down a bit on travel. I have some other potential plans, though I have no ideas which will actually end up happening. Much better than feeling I have no potential plans!

Reading:

I’ve been reading 75-80 books for the last few years, but this year I’m going to try and bump it up to 100 again, which I used to hit with ease. I’m going to try and read more diversely, especially PoC authors, but I’m not going to make my goals too specific. Reading is what I do to relax–if I put too much pressure on what I feel I “should” read versus what I fancy at the time, it can become something that makes me anxious rather than gives pleasure.

Writing:

I plan to finish my projects currently on the go; the collab, the novella, Betwixt Book (which is a book close to my heart I’ve been trying to get right for awhile), and at least make a start on another thriller. I’ll also have edits on Masquerade and Shattered Minds this year, plus copyediting and proofing. That’ll be more than enough to keep me going!

Hope everyone enjoys the rest of their 2015 and 2016 treats you well.