{"id":1554,"date":"2021-01-01T10:33:32","date_gmt":"2021-01-01T10:33:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/?p=1554"},"modified":"2020-12-16T17:02:00","modified_gmt":"2020-12-16T17:02:00","slug":"new-year-status-report-2021","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/?p=1554","title":{"rendered":"New Year status report 2021"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is my eighth year of writing up the status of my writing – see 2014<\/a>, 2015<\/a>,\u00a02016<\/a>, 2017<\/a>, 2018<\/a>, 2019<\/a>, and 2020<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In February, two of my science fiction short stories, “Scattered Across the Stars” and “Always Carry a Spare”, which I had submitted in late 2019 to new Leicester publisher Space Cat Press, were accepted for publication, and in September they appeared in the Uncharted Constellations<\/a> anthology. This is available as an ebook, but disappointingly the global pandemic resulted in the printed edition being (permanently?) postponed.<\/p>\n

At the start of June, I took a week off work, but with actual holidays being impossible, I was so bored that I dusted off the manuscript of my Roman Scotland children’s book, Pax Caledonia<\/em>, and attempted to fix some of its structural problems. It’s a lot better, now, I think – but it’s back in a (virtual) drawer again for the foreseeable future.<\/p>\n

In September, I took another editing pass at my supernatural lighthouse story, “Keeper of the Light”, and in November it was accepted for inclusion in the Dark Scotland<\/a> anthology from Darkstroke Books<\/a>. Available to pre-order now – release date 25th January 2021 (Burns Night).<\/p>\n

At the start of December I received my royalty statements for The Wreck of the Argyll<\/em> and The Beast on the Broch<\/em>, and both were affected by the pandemic. The Beast<\/em> was affected to a lesser extent; before the pandemic started, it had already bottomed out (9 copies sold in six months) so the 6 copies sold for this period makes two statements in a row with single-figure sales. The poor old Beast<\/em> is ready to be put down, I think. Argyll<\/em> was hit harder, with sales dropping over 80% to just 14 copies in six months. Publishing is really suffering with the COVID situation. As a reader, I just hope things improve as we edge our way back closer to normality over the next year; the big publishers who are financially placed to survive these trying times aren’t the ones who are putting out the most interesting books.<\/p>\n

New writing? I didn’t find myself in the headspace for new writing this year, so I didn’t manage to produce any new stories or novels in 2020. I did take another stab at the notes and structure for my sci-fi novel (I’ve got the chapters laid out for four interweaving narratives across two time periods, which is possibly the dictionary definition of “a rod for your own back”), but I haven’t made much progress there at all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is my eighth year of writing up the status of my writing – see 2014, 2015,\u00a02016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020. In February, two of my science fiction short stories, “Scattered Across the Stars” and “Always Carry a Spare”, which I had submitted in late 2019 to new Leicester publisher Space Cat Press, were… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1523,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"New Year status report 2021","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Uncharted-Constellations-1.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p37h7H-p4","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1554"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1554"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1554\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1559,"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1554\/revisions\/1559"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}