A Year in Pictures – London Wall

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For my birthday, I give you: one of my two favorite spots in London. (The other is the front steps of St. Paul’s, right by my hostel; I ate many a dinner sitting there and watching the sun set down Ludgate Hill.) The garden you see here belongs to the Salters’ Company, but on the far side there’s a little fragment of park beneath this, one of the largest remaining fragments of the Roman and medieval London Wall. You can see its patchwork nature and the toll taken by the passing centuries, but it’s a nice little relic of the City’s past.

Originally published at Swan Tower. You can comment here or there.

It’s been ten years! Let’s celebrate.

It’s been ten years since my first short story was published. If Amazon is to be believed, Summoned to Destiny, the anthology containing “White Shadow”, came out on September 1st, 2004. Which, as it so happens, is my birthday.

They say it takes ten years to get good at something, don’t they? That’s one of the random metrics, anyway. Ten years from my first published story to a World Fantasy nomination; not bad. Of course, I was writing long before “White Shadow” came out. I got what I consider to be my first mature novel ideas when I was seventeen — ideas that ultimately became Lies and Prophecy and Doppelganger — and ten years later I was writing Midnight Never Come, which I view as one of the benchmarks of me leveling up as an author. I have no idea what I’ll be writing in 2017, since I’ll draft the last of the Memoirs next year, and (probably) The Changing Sea the year after that. But I bet it’ll be fun.

Anyway! Long-time readers of this blog may recall I have a tradition — not observed every year, but going on more years than not for the last decade and more — of a “birthday egotism” post. Back in 2003, I was having kind of a blah time of it on my birthday, and decided to counteract that with a post wherein I listed awesome things about myself, with no disclaimers, caveats, or moderating language allowed. The idea is that, like many people, I am good at downplaying my own achievements, and it’s valuable to have one day where I get to just bask in the happy — especially because I can go back and look at it later, when I need a pick-me-up. So behind the cut you will find a listing of what I’ve done that I’m proud of since 2012 (that being the last time I made a birthday egotism post). It begins with the traditional phrasing:

I’m thirty-four today. What have I got to show for it?

( Read the rest of this entry » )

And, because it’s the ten-year anniversary of my first published story, I want to back up and take another tally, this one going all the way back to the beginning of my experiences as a writer. I have a place where I list all the fiction I’ve completed, and I want to see what it adds up to:

Written
• four skit scripts
• three puzzle game stories
• five poems
• one short nonfiction book
• twenty-seven flash pieces
• one hundred and four short stories
• six novelettes
• three novellas
• fifteen novels

That’s everything, or at least as close to everything as my records can get it: published, sold, unsold, trunked, unsubmitted, fanfic, OM skits, the mystery story I wrote when I was nine. It isn’t actually everything, because I’ve probably forgotten stuff, and I know for certain that it doesn’t include any of the fiction I’ve written for RPG characters, which has added up to rather a lot over the years. But it’s the most complete count I have. A more discriminating list:

Published or completed and forthcoming
• one short nonfiction book
• seventeen flash pieces
• thirty-eight short stories
• four novelettes
• two novellas
• ten novels

Not bad. Not bad at all.

Happy my birthday to all of you, and I hope you have a splendid day!

Originally published at Swan Tower. You can comment here or there.