{"id":1647,"date":"2024-01-01T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-01-01T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/?p=1647"},"modified":"2024-01-01T11:07:51","modified_gmt":"2024-01-01T11:07:51","slug":"new-year-status-report-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/?p=1647","title":{"rendered":"New Year status report 2024"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This is my eleventh 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>, 2022<\/a> and 2023<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Don\u2019t think anyone read last year\u2019s but if I cared about an audience I\u2019d have given up any form of writing years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So what happened this year, writing-wise?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Space Cat Press issued a call for submissions, and as I\u2019d had stories included in their two previous anthologies I wanted to keep the streak going.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I started writing in February, but my first attempt was way too long (about 6000 words when the limit was 3000) and I didn\u2019t see how I\u2019d be able to cut it down by 50% without ruining it. My second attempt was just blah. Phoned in, written by numbers, nothing worthwhile about it whatsoever. My third attempt had a certain amount of potential, and it took some extensive structural edits from Siobhan Logan to give it an ending that didn\u2019t just fizzle out, but it made it into the anthology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Bark<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s safe to say that the words weren\u2019t flowing this year. And those three stories (two of which weren\u2019t even worth sending out) were the sum total of my output.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The story I had published in Space Cat\u2019s Severed Souls<\/em> anthology, Call of the Void<\/em>, was included in the Best of British Science Fiction anthology for 2022, so I did have two publications – one new, one reprint.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Apart from that, in May I completed another draft of my Greek mythology novel, Lykaon<\/em>, which is an expansion of a short section of the Iliad where a young prince of Troy is captured by Achilles, sold into slavery, eventually ransomed, and returns home, only to face Achilles again – right after the death of Patroclus. Once I was happy with the draft, I started sending it out to agents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Months and month later, and I\u2019ve got nothing to show for it but a handful of form rejections and a lot of being ghosted by agents. I think there are still half a dozen outstanding submissions, but when those inevitably come to nothing I don\u2019t think I\u2019m going to bother with any more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If I can work up the enthusiasm I may self-publish it, but for someone with my complete lack of marketability or marketing nous that\u2019s just another way for no-one to read my work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My published novels? They\u2019re dead. Single-figure sales in a six-month period for each book. But then, they never sold much in the first place. Each has sold barely 500 copies in total since publication back in 2016.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t have any specific plans for writing in 2024. We\u2019ll see what happens.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is my eleventh year of writing up the status of my writing – see 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023. Don\u2019t think anyone read last year\u2019s but if I cared about an audience I\u2019d have given up any form of writing years ago. So what happened this year, writing-wise?… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1641,"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":[1,4],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/bark-bone-front-cover.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p37h7H-qz","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1647"}],"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=1647"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1647\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1652,"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1647\/revisions\/1652"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}