{"id":1616,"date":"2023-01-01T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-01-01T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/?p=1616"},"modified":"2023-01-01T10:20:11","modified_gmt":"2023-01-01T10:20:11","slug":"new-year-status-report-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/?p=1616","title":{"rendered":"New year status report 2023"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This is my tenth year of writing up the status of my writing – see 2014<\/a>, 2015<\/a>, 2016<\/a>, 2017<\/a>, 2018<\/a>, 2019<\/a>, 2020<\/a>, 2021<\/a>, and 2022<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ten years of writing these updates! I do sometimes wonder why I bother when there\u2019s so little to report (and when these posts get readers in single figures), but it gives me something to look back on. I\u2019ve long since given up on writing for other people, so there\u2019s nothing wrong with writing these blog posts for myself, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This year saw the publication<\/a> of my science fiction short story Call of the Void<\/em> in the Severed Souls<\/em> anthology from Space Cat Press. This is the second time I\u2019ve had a story in a Space Cat anthology, and I was particularly happy that this year saw the print release of both the new anthology and the previous one (which was originally ebook-only due to COVID). Not least because that meant I could send copies to my Mum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Severed<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I took part in the Severed Souls<\/em> ebook launch (in prerecorded video form on YouTube<\/a>), discussing alien life, and the double Severed Souls<\/em> and Uncharted Constellations<\/em> print launch (in physical human form) performing a reading from my short story Always Carry a Spare<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Me<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

My Scottish historical children\u2019s novels, The Wreck of the Argyll <\/em>and The Beast on the Broch<\/em>, are still out there and ticking over in small numbers. If they were software, they\u2019d be \u201cdeprecated\u201d if not actually \u201cend-of-life\u201d quite yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In terms of new writing, I didn\u2019t manage any more short stories this year. But! I wrote a novel<\/a>! For the first time in the five years since I became disillusioned with children\u2019s books, I found the necessary enthusiasm to sit down at Scrivener and produce the first draft of a new novel over the course of three months this summer. My tenth<\/em> completed novel, if anyone is counting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Lykaon<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not children\u2019s fiction. Not sure what it is, exactly – apart from being 70,000 words of Iliad fan-fiction. There\u2019s a current market for retellings of Greek mythology, but specifically feminist retellings, which this book isn\u2019t. It\u2019s not anti<\/em>-feminist in any way, but the focus is elsewhere – on a young man battered by fate trying to determine his destiny. Recently I read Frontier Wolf<\/em> by Rosemary Sutcliff, one of her Roman historical novels, and it possibly fits the same audience. I\u2019m just not sure that\u2019s an audience that still exists in the marketing plans of publishers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I wrote Lykaon<\/em> for myself. Ancient history and mythology have fascinated me for as long as I can remember, all the way back to the first book I remember reading (as documented in my blog post Origin story<\/a>) and I did<\/em> do that degree in Classics, so maybe it was inevitable that I\u2019d turn to Greek mythology at some point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So what now? My beta readers (my partner Sandra, and my old friend Colin) have gone through my manuscript and provided their feedback. I\u2019ve produced a second draft based on their comments and now\u2026 dunno. I\u2019m in no hurry to go through the agent merry-go-round again, and I lack the marketing ability to make self-publication worthwhile. But! I wrote a novel! So I\u2019m counting that as a win.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is my tenth year of writing up the status of my writing – see 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022. Ten years of writing these updates! I do sometimes wonder why I bother when there\u2019s so little to report (and when these posts get readers in single figures), but it… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1601,"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":"","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\/2022\/10\/Lykaon-small-cover-e1709130934332.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p37h7H-q4","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1616"}],"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=1616"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1616\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1627,"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1616\/revisions\/1627"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}