Well here we are, about a week away from 2010 and it doesn't look like the earth's population will be anywhere close to 10 billion by then. Bad Religion should be happy.
This is the time of year when a young man's thoughts turn to end of the year lists and retrospectives. It seems like everyone's making them, and since I compulsively love to make pointless lists it wouldn't be proper for me not to throw my hat into the ring.
2009 was a hell of a year for me from a publishing perspective. The Mysterious Flame came out in 2009 and sold out as well, while managing to get a number of very nice things said about it from a lot of very cool people. I had stories appear on Pseudopod and A Thousand Faces, and sold stories to All Hallows and Innsmouth Free Press that haven't been published yet. My short story "The Reading Room" got an honorable mention from Ellen Datlow, and the anthology it appeared in (Bound for Evil) got a nomination for a Shirley Jackson Award. Partly as a result of that, I got to take a trip out to Readercon, my first big-deal writing convention, where I got to meet so many awesome people that I couldn't possibly begin to list them all.
I launched this website in 2009, which Reyna was kind enough to design for me and where you might be reading these words right now (unless you're reading them on LiveJournal, or on a feed reader, or somewhere else). And just last month (see, I'm good at remembering things that just happened) I got the opportunity to participate in the Boris Karloff Blogathon, which was a lot of fun and hopefully just the first of many such things that I do in the future.
That's pretty much the opposite of what 2009 was for me when it comes to the actual production of new fiction. I wrote very little this year, for any number of reasons that don't seem very interesting right now. Much of what I did write, though, I wrote in the last couple of months, which hopefully means that we're looking at a turnaround. This is the place in the post where a lesser man would succumb to the temptation to make a crack about how keeping my fingers crossed makes it hard to type or something, but here I am, standing strong.
I met a lot of great people in 2009 -- both at Readercon and elsewhere -- and was lucky enough to continue many other excellent associations. I'm not going to even try to shout out to all the people whose company, commentary, friendship, thoughts, and presence made 2009 a wonderful year, but if I'm doing my job at all you know who you are.
Normally this is the time of year when I'd put together a top five list of movies and that sort of thing, but I actually didn't see all that many movies theatrically this year, and many of the ones I did see were pretty middle-of-the-road, so I don't think I have enough ammo for a top five list. If I had to pick a favorite new movie that I saw in 2009 it would probably be the criminally underwatched The Brothers Bloom, which still hasn't been released onto DVD for sale due to some ridiculous release strategies on the part of the distributor. It can be rented, though, and if you haven't seen it I'd definitely recommend you give it a look. It's the second feature from the director of Brick, and it's a great, fun movie in its own right.
I actually read more new books in 2009 than I usually do, though some of them were just new to me. Notably it was in 2009 that I was introduced to Ted Naifeh and his work on both Courtney Crumrin and Polly and the Pirates. I don't know if I'm too late coming to the table, or if I just travel in the wrong circles, but I haven't seen a lot of people talk about either of these titles, which is a shame because they're both consistently great.
Speaking of comics, I was also introduced to Captain Britain & MI13, which is a really great series that seems to be flying under a lot of peoples' radar.
As far as "real" books go, I didn't quite discover Cherie Priest in 2009, but in the last year I read almost everything she had out and loved it pretty universally. I haven't gotten a chance to go through Boneshaker yet, but I'm looking forward to it something fierce. I also discovered John Langan, who first blew me away with his short story "Technicolor" in Ellen Datlow's anthology Poe, and then later continued to impress me with Mr. Gaunt & Other Uneasy Encounters.
If I had to pick a favorite novel from the ones I read in 2009 it would probably have to be Daryl Gregory's Pandemonium, which actually came out in 2008 but sue me, I'm a year behind. It was a seriously amazing debut, and meeting the author at Readercon was a huge treat. Again, I haven't yet gotten a chance to take a go at his second novel The Devil's Alphabet, but it's on my list.
As for books that actually came out in 2009, there was Ellen Datlow's Lovecraft Unbound, which was full of great Lovecraftian short fiction by a lot of great authors. I also got the opportunity to read and enjoy Amanda Downum's wonderful debut novel The Drowning City, which is especially rare since I virtually never read secondary-world fantasy novels anymore, let alone enjoy them. It's a strong, polished, and exciting debut, and I'm looking forward to the rest of the series quite a bit.
And of course there was Jesse Bullington's debut The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart, which I don't really need to talk about because it's been tearing up the universe, but I'm going to talk about it anyway because it's that awesome. It's a book unlike any other I've read, from a guy unlike any other I've met. It's a little (or maybe a lot) more gritty, dirty, and scatological than is my usual cup of tea, but it's a book that won me over completely before it was through, and it sounds like it's done the same for a lot of other folks.
I've got at least one end of the decade list in the works for you (preview: My Favorite Movie Monsters of the Decade) and if I'm really ambitious I'll do a list of my favorite movies of the decade, too, but we'll see if that one materializes. The first one definitely will, though. Expect it sometime soon, albeit probably after the weekend since I'm going out of town.
If you don't hear from me again: Happy whatever!
|