Mr Writing Year 2019

As has become annual I thought I'd do a quick blog post as to my literary achievements during 2019.

It's been a productive year in some respects but has felt completely unproductive in others. I feel this  is probably due to my own personal perception rather than anything else, as in terms of publications it's not been bad at all.

Usually I aim to write a short story a month, but due to a desire to focus on other projects and also a lack of impetus I only wrote seven short stories in 2019: "Life + Illusion = Love + Dream", "The Natural Environment", "The Song The Moon Taught Us", "Mobster Thermidor", "Fetch", "The Malaise Trap" and "All That Dead Beauty". A novel I began, "The Non-Conformists", I subsequently abandoned.

I sold four short stories this year: "Life + Illusion = Love + Dream" to the Pete Shelley tribute anthology, Love Bites, "Of Course, A Girl" to the Afterlives Of The Writers anthology, "The Girl With The Horizontal Walk" to be published as a chapbook by Salò Press (my partner runs this press, but it was her suggestion to take this story), and "All That Dead Beauty" to an anthology I'm currently not allowed to mention.

The following three stories were published this year in this order: "The Girl With The Horizontal Walk" as a chapbook from Salò Press, "Of Course, A Girl" in Afterlives Of The Writers from 5th Wall Press, and "Life + Illusion = Love + Dream" in Love Bites from Dostoyevsky Wannabe Press. Additionally, a short reminiscence on seeing the band The Smiths in 1983 & 1984 was included in The Smiths: The Day I Was There published by This Day In Music Books and edited by Richard Houghton. This year also saw me occasionally reviewing books again for Black Static magazine.

In addition to the short stories, I had two books published in 2019. The mini short story collection, "The Forest of Dead Children", through Black Shuck Books, and the novella "The Uneasy" from Eibonvale Press.

There are updates on two other book publications I mentioned last year. My eighth short story collection, "Frequencies of Existence", will be published next year by NewCon Press. Predominantly SF, there will be twenty-four stories in the book. Cover reveal here. And "O For Obscurity, Or, The Story of N", a creative non-fiction biography of the musician known as The Mysterious N Senada - who worked in association with and influenced The Residents - should appear through Psychofon Records in conjunction with a re-release of some of his material. This book was written after I decoded his diaries which were discovered in 2018.

I have a handful of stories awaiting publication that were originally accepted in previous years, and a few novels are also under consideration by various agents/publishers, as they were last year. My next project is a proposed film book for which I'll begin interviewing the director and actors in 2020. It's a speculative project at present, but hopefully will bear fruit. I'm quite excited about it.

As I said at the start of this post, from my perspective 2019 has been a quiet year, although putting it in words I don't think I've done too badly at all.