2012 – A Bloody Fantastic Year Ends

So, the year 2012 ended a few days ago, and it’s been an absolute blast, to say the least.

Anyways, to do a small recap of my goals for the year,

1. Write ~420,000 words of both fiction (various submissions and novel projects) and non-fiction (reviews and blogposts).
2. Read 400 novels, comics, novellas, stand-alone short stories (still not sure if these SHOULD be included) and listen to some audio dramas and audiobooks.

At the end of October, I was very close to both of those goals, having crossed the ~472,000-word mark, and was still ahead on the reading goals, as I was at 352/400 on September 30th. You can find the November report here.

2012 Writing Challenge

1. Project: Cloak of Secrecy – I really wanted to get a good head-start on the next phase of the project, but that didn’t work out exactly. For one thing, I ended up taking two trips to Delhi and that screwed with my entire plan for the month. Then, I was behind reviewing and reading as well, not to mention that keeping up with my Advent Calendar and Names: A New Perspective projects kept me busy throughout the month. Doing the whole sprint for NaNoWriMo really wore me out too, so December ended up being a soft month for me. I wrote only 1,000-words on this, which is really bad showing. Now though, going to kick my procrastination in the ass and get back in gear. Bring on 2013!
2. The Founding Fields – Not too bad a month this time around. As I said above, the Advent Calendar project kept me busy, and taking things slowly after NaNoWriMo meant that the regular reviewing schedule fell a bit behind in terms of what I wanted to cover. I still put out a high number of reviews though, 11 in all for the blog alone. I also did 5 guest reviews (all part of the Advent Calendar) which you can find at – A Fantastical Librarian, Bookworm Blues, Civilian Reader, Qwillery, and SF Signal. That last one is a major milestone I think since SF Signal happens to be a Hugo-award winning blog for 2012! Crazy, I know! I love being where I am right now. Gonna make 2013 a really crazy year, I can promise you that.
3. Just Beyond Infinity – No reviews this month unfortunately. I saw some decent films (The Hobbit and Jack Reacher), and some boring ones (Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 2), but didn’t get around to reviewing anything. December was a really quiet month for the blog overall. Gonna make sure that 2013 is a different beast! I already have some ideas on what to do for it.
4. The Blog – I kicked off the second wave of posts for Names: A New Perspective and it was fantastic once again – Lee Collins, Bradley P. Beaulieu, Janet Edwards, Erin M. Evans, Lyndsay Faye, David Guymer, Cassandra Rose Clarke, and, Jo Anderton. Opening up the scope of the series to include any and all authors, irrespective of their years in the industry, has worked out far better than I thought it would, and I can’t wait to share the next few posts with you guys. I’m also going to be sending out another round of emails soon so I can keep the series going. Thanks to everyone who has been supportive of the entire effort! The month also saw me do my first ever interview, for Mieneke at A Fantastical Librarian, which you can read here. This was part of her “Blogger Query” series and I’m quite honoured to have been asked to participate in this. I’m looking forward to seeing where Mieneke takes the series next. I also posted the third part of my Horus Heresy series, here, and I’m looking at doing a fourth and final post soon. There were some topics that I wanted to talk about this month, such as how several media outlets and folks have been blaming video games for the Sandy Hook, Connecticut shootings (this ridiculousness never ends, especially when these people blame games with NO guns for these tragic incidents), and Disney getting the Star Wars franchise, but never got around to them. There was just too many other things going on. Given that the whole “discussion” on either issue has already started to die down, it’s probably best to leave it all at that, and just celebrate the new year. That’s what I think! I did post a piece on comics writer Gail Simone being let go by DC from her run on Batgirl, which has been simply fantastic, and that too over the phone! Good thing that Gail has been rehired and will be taking back control of the series after issues #17-18 by Ray Fawkes. Alongwith my guest post series, my Advent Calendar 2012 series also insured that the month was an extremely busy one for the blog, and I’m really happy with how it all turned out. It’s definitely going to be a regular series from now on!

Now that was a busy month, in ways that I didn’t even expect! Could not have hoped for a better month, except to have had more time for writing, but that’s by the by. I’m still amazed that I got done as much as I did.

Not quite able to match November’s awe-inspiring ~95,400-words, I only managed just short of ~37,900-words, which is nothing to scoff at really. A few thousand words of fiction writing could have totally set me up, ah well. I mentioned in the November report that I had already crossed my target of ~472,000-words, so all the writing in December was a pure, unadulterated bonus. I end the year with a total of ~510,400-words written, give or take a couple hundred. Half a million words in a year, which is ~90,000-words more than what I had planned to do originally! Can I get a hell yeah? 🙂

I have lots of things for 2013 planned already and I can’t wait to tell you all about it. Will be soon, I promise!

2012 Reading Challenge

December was a better month for reading than November had been. I didn’t read as many novels as I wanted to, but I still read quite a few, and ones more enjoyable than the previous month. In the end, that’s what really matter doesn’t it? The Advent Calendar series meant that I had to relisten to some audio dramas I had already listened to earlier on in the year, so that was a fun process. Glad I did that!

I may have slightly cheated hitting the target of 400 by listing the Black Library Advent eShorts separately, but I think the way I did is justified considering that the stories aren’t collected together in a single volume as yet.

Regardless, I hit my goal, and ended the year at 402. That is still better than the original target of 200! I’m still collating all my entries together and don’t have all the exact numbers, but I’ve put up a preliminary classification by format of my reading up on the blog (here). Will take me a few more days to make sure that all entries are correct.

Your feedback is most welcome!

It wasn’t too hard to pick my “best of…” this month either, which is great really.

Top 3 – Brimstone Angels by Erin M. Evans, Night’s Masque Volume 2: Merchant of Dreams by Anne Lyle, and, Siege of Castellax by C. L. Werner.

Honourable Mentions – Pantomime by Laura Lam, Dredd Omnibus by Various, and, Shadowstorm #2: Hammer of Angels by G. T. Almasi.

Top 3 [Comics]: Marvel Now: Thor, God of Thunder #3 by Jason Aaron, Before Watchmen: Minutemen #4 by Darwyn Cooke, and, Aquaman #15 by Geoff Johns.

Honourable Mention [Comics]: Prophecy #5 by Ron Marz, Saga #8 by Brian K. Vaughan, and, Fables #1 by Bill Willingham.

You’ll notice that there aren’t as many of these entries reviewed as previous months have been. Don’t worry about it, these will all be going up soon!

Some new acquisitions –

The Void Trilogy by Peter F. Hamilton; Sabina Kane #1-3 by Jaye Wells; Demon Cycle #1-2 by Peter V. Brett; The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss, the first Kingkiller Chronicle novel (already have the second!); these are all for my “Top 25 Series To Read In 2013” project.

Birds of Prey: The Death of Oracle by Gail Simone; The Darkness: Rebirth Volume 1 by David Hine; Witchblade: Rebirth Volume 1 by Tim Seeley; these were my Christmas treats to myself, as I outlined here.