The inevitable end-of-year review post
This year I actually have accomplishments
Seasons greetings!
I hope your holidays were happy, and that you had a good Christmas or Hanukah or at least some time with family and friends away from work. Christmas is a day I like to spend indoors, away from the world. I like the idea of a silent day, the world shutting down for a few hours of rest. This year I had to make a brief excursion in the afternoon, and returning home I saw the local McDonalds drive-thru packed with cars, which felt kind of depressing. And then, too, as I got closer to home I saw a person get out of a car with a huge order and realized they were a delivery driver. Yes, sure, plenty of people have to work on Christmas Day and that can’t be helped, but the rise of delivery apps really does seem like an attack to me on the idea of the holiday in general. There’s always someone chipping away at the idea that people deserve time off from work. I don’t know. I guess that can’t be helped. Otherwise my holidays were fine. Same old, same old. Time with family, and then some time alone after Boxing Day that I hope I’ll be able to use to get some writing done.
Year in Review
Fiction
I think it’s safe to say this has been a good year for me, at least in terms of my writing. This year I had published:
“Diary of the Wolf,” in Old Moon Quarterly 6. It’s a werewolf story written in the style of Pepys’ diary.
“The Ysidra,” in Indie Bites 15, Wishes and Wizards. It’s a high fantasy story about a pair of lowly soldiers wandering in the aftermath of a brutal battle, and how they find a way to keep the memory of the event alive.
“The Debtors’ Crypt,” in Hellarkey III. It’s a horror story about a reanimated corpse paying off a debt accrued in life.
My only goal for the year was to sell two short stories, a goal I hit dead on and also exceeded. I sold “Diary” at the end of 2023, so I don’t really think of it as being a 2024 achievement. I sold a fourth story but I don’t think it’s ever going to appear—it seems like a classic case of the venue being in unacknowledged terminal decline, with no further issues forthcoming. The editor has twice reached out to authors and then not responded, but whatever. That happens.
By far my biggest writing achievement this year, or actually ever, was that my short story, “The Ball Game” was longlisted for the 2024 CBC Short Story Prize. That was a huge confidence boost, one of those things that lets me call myself a writer, that lifts the shame of trying to explain that I enjoy writing fiction. The story itself hasn’t been published yet, but that’s fine. It will.
I’m probably going to cut back a little on short stories next year. I really enjoy writing them, but there are other things I want to do as well, and that time has to come from somewhere.
Book Reviews
I also like writing book reviews, so much so that I started writing them for and pitching them to literary journals and magazines. I wrote about that recently here, so I won’t bore you by going over it again.
My review of César Aira’s Fulgentius
Adam’s Notes
This was my first full year of writing a newsletter. I started in August 2023. I enjoy writing this. I enjoy the challenge of coming up with something new, week after week. But it’s also not serious enough that it’s okay when I fail, I can take a week or whatever.
My subscriber count is modest, but it has more than doubled over the course of 2024. That’s something. Here’s what I’ve noticed works for attracting new readers:
By far the most important thing is to just to write what I’m interested in and passionate about. When I do that, people seem to latch onto my interest, even if it’s not something they’d care about otherwise. The more I’m interested, the better it works.
Sharing my newsletter on social media works a little bit, but what really works is when other people share it. I guess it lends my writing an air of credibility.
The substack recommendation button works the same way. I appreciate those newsletters that recommend mine, and if you want to add me to your recommendations list I’d be super grateful.
Probably the thing I’m proudest of most in this newsletter is my occasional interview series. It gets me out of my shell a little bit and talking to people whose work I appreciate. This year I interviewed:
Matt Holder, author of Hurled Headlong Flaming
Shelley Puhak, author of Dark Queens: The Bloody Rivalry That Forged the Medieval World
Bryn Hammond, author of Waste Flowers: A Tale of Goatskin
Graham Thomas Wilcox, author of Contra Amatores Mundi
I find it takes a bit more effort to do an interview, and it’s not something I look forward to doing, but I like having done it, and so hopefully this time next year I’ll be able to say I’ve done a few more interviews here.
In 2024 I covered the year 1661 of the diary of Samuel Pepys, as I’m reading along with Phil Giford’s site. I’ve been meaning to create an index of my Pepys Posts, so I figure I might as well do that here.
Pepys Show 2024/1661:
January: Werewolf edition
February: Pepys Show
March: The Bondman
April: A ghost, a parrot, and a door made of human skin
April, part two: Drinking the king’s health
May: Leaping off a balcony
June: Pepys won’t stop singing and it’s getting on everyone’s nerves
July: Where there’s a will, there’s a relative
August: Pepys meets a baboon
September: Shootout in London
October: What can the diary of Samuel Pepys tell us about the election?
November: I couldn’t think of a title for this one
December: Christmastime for Samuel Pepys
Rest assured there will be more Pepys posting in the new year.
I’ve also been writing about the French chansons de geste. I have a few more I want to cover, but I’m probably going to sideline these in the new year for a new project about the next evolution of the chivalric romances.
Gestes I’ve written about in Adam’s Notes:
Introducing the chansons de geste (Yde et Olive, and Hugues Capet)
Gormont et Isembart, a neglected chanson de geste
Getting drunk and stupid with the paladins of France: Le Pèlerinage de Charlemagne
Gui of Burgundy: zoomer knight versus boomer knight
The Song of Blancheflor: was Charlemagne cuckolded by a dwarf?
Heist Watch: mythical sword edition
Aye of Avignon: a chanson de geste
Chansons de Geste in Africa and Brazil?
I have to admit I’ve been tempted by the thought of turning on paid posts. I might end up doing that at some point, but for now I’m holding off. There’s a handful of people who’ve always supported my writing, and the thought of them paying for my newsletter is mortifying to me. I also don’t want to be locked into the substack ecosystem.
I’ve noticed people leaving substack for other platforms. I have mixed feelings about this. I don’t like substack getting in bed with Bari Weiss and other right wing grifters, but if you look around that’s also the entire internet right now. Every social media platform has some version of this problem. Twitter is the worst because its owner wants to turn it into 4chan, but bluesky, facebook/instagram, substack, etc, are only a few steps behind. For now, substack is free, and it’s built in a way that I’m able to gather more readers, two things that don’t seem to be the case with other newsletter platforms.
Going Forward: 2025
Originally, my idea for this newsletter was to use it like a notebook, a public depository of interesting things I stumble upon in my reading, the way I used to use twitter. I’m going to try to get back to that in 2025. I’m going to launch a new reading series, hopefully in January, that will let me pick apart a chivalric romance from the Italian tradition. There’s also going to be a Canadian election at some point this year, and I’m going to try to write a little about that.
I’m going to keep working on short stories, but not as much. I will definitely be writing more book reviews. And I have a few other projects I’ll be working on as well.
Happy New Year, and I hope I’ll see you in 2025.
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Been a pleasure reading you this year, particularly enjoyed your review of Glorious Exploits. I'm on a bit of an ancient Greece kick lately and you make it seem right up my alley
Congratulations on your achievements in 2024! In addition to your publications, you doubled your subscribers, which is encouraging for newcomers like me.