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autopopeJanuary 2022: Quantum of Nightmares (novel, The New Management, book 2, pub: tor.com, Orbit (UK))
March 2022: Escape from Yokai Land (novella, The Laundry Files, pub: tor.com)
There concludes my list of published fic in 2022.
Both these items are eligible for the usual award ballots and my ego will be duly gratified if either of them show up on a shortlist: I am discovering that fearing one is an over-the-hill has-been is just as insecurity-inducing as youthful imposter-syndrome, at least if you have to live with my rather peculiar headmeat.
In theory the Laundry Files are also eligible for the best series Hugo, but if offered a place on the shortlist I will decline. So if you're a Hugo nominating voter, don't waste your vote.
The Laundry files are indeed elligible for the best series shortlist, but Worldcon 2023 will be held in Chengdu. Only one of the LF books has been translated into Chinese: so it almost certainly can't win. Moreover, if it's on the shortlist in 2023 it can't be shortlisted again until it's grown by 250,000 words in length. Meanwhile, Worldcon in 2024 will be held in Glasgow, where it has an enthusiastic UK fan base. So it makes sense for me to decline a nomination for best series in 2023.
Note that I agree with the reasoning behind requiring an extra 250,000 words or 3 books between Best Series shortlistings (to prevent perennial series from hogging the shortlist), this is just an unexpected second-order consequence.
March 2022: Escape from Yokai Land (novella, The Laundry Files, pub: tor.com)
There concludes my list of published fic in 2022.
Both these items are eligible for the usual award ballots and my ego will be duly gratified if either of them show up on a shortlist: I am discovering that fearing one is an over-the-hill has-been is just as insecurity-inducing as youthful imposter-syndrome, at least if you have to live with my rather peculiar headmeat.
In theory the Laundry Files are also eligible for the best series Hugo, but if offered a place on the shortlist I will decline. So if you're a Hugo nominating voter, don't waste your vote.
The Laundry files are indeed elligible for the best series shortlist, but Worldcon 2023 will be held in Chengdu. Only one of the LF books has been translated into Chinese: so it almost certainly can't win. Moreover, if it's on the shortlist in 2023 it can't be shortlisted again until it's grown by 250,000 words in length. Meanwhile, Worldcon in 2024 will be held in Glasgow, where it has an enthusiastic UK fan base. So it makes sense for me to decline a nomination for best series in 2023.
Note that I agree with the reasoning behind requiring an extra 250,000 words or 3 books between Best Series shortlistings (to prevent perennial series from hogging the shortlist), this is just an unexpected second-order consequence.
no subject
Date: 2022-11-22 07:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-11-23 09:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-11-23 06:59 am (UTC)Also useful, to know that anyone looking towards being 'writer with a day job' should realise that a full-length novel and a novella is an entirely reasonable expectation for the year's output from an experienced full-time author.
no subject
Date: 2022-11-24 01:37 pm (UTC)Expectations for output from full-time authors are pants. It all depends on the author, and the type of output.
I'm not really prolific or fast (although I used to be): I can maybe emit a book and a bit a year these days. A decade or two ago, 1.5-3 books a year was practical, but I was younger, had more energy, wasn't addled by too many drugs (to keep me alive, not the fun kind), and wasn't kinda-sorta perennially depressed. (NB: I'm not seeking therapy for depression because the waiting lists are measured in years and anyway I think I've got a good handle on why: and I'm not seeking medication for it because I don't want to add a tenth or eleventh repeat prescription to my load-out.)
So a typical year for me is 130,000-180,000 words, down from maybe 200-300,000 words two decades ago. And this is my version of semi-retirement (which I hope to be able to sustain for a decade or more ahead).
When I was combining it with tech journalism I was selling 500,000 words aa year, though I stopped that after 2006.
In contrast: Harry Turtledove used to write and sell 850,000 words of fiction a year. And as of about 8 years ago, Seanan Maguire used to write and sell 2.2 million words of fic, which is a bit prolific.
A key point: if you have a standard cookie-cutter formula you can bang out the words like a machine gun. Having to reinvent the story every time slows everything down enormously and you might have noticed I try not to write the same novel twice. In contrast, Harry used to recycle the US Civil War and/or WW2 ad nauseam, in alternate history, or with magic. He did his research and by golly he rode it like a broke-back mule. (The early Byzantine novels were similarly researched -- it was his doctoral field -- but didn't sell as well.)
Seanan is sui generis, but I gather she used to write a romance novel a month for Harlequin Romance (under a rotating set of pseudonyms) in addition to her horror and fantasy tracks. The romance genre has a set of standard tropes that can be assembled like Lego bricks -- it's possible to write a romance that doesn't use them, but if you want to earn a comfortable living that means six to twelve books a year, and writing them to a flow chart has got to make everything easier.
Complexity is the enemy of writing speed. And full-time authors are doing it to earn a living. And they get paid per unit. So there's a baked-in incentive to write really fast and really simply and to reuse the same wallpaper and furniture every time.
If I wanted to milk the Laundry Files I could write "Bob v. Cultists: this month's adventure" stories until the cows come home. But they wouldn't be very imaginative or experimental or indeed very different, one from the next, and the readers would catch on and get bored and drift away. But I could do maybe three a year for a couple of years (even at my current low-energy pace) and make bank for a while.
Only I don't want to do that.
no subject
Date: 2022-11-24 03:06 pm (UTC)I would rather you remained in the pre-order stack marked 'I will set aside a day to read this', and know there's still a book I can't quite belive has the same cover when I re-read it a few months later, and realise how much more there is in it.
And that, unfortunately for you, is about the complexity.
I am beginning to see ways of writing it which are simpler, and *slightly* faster.
no subject
Date: 2022-11-25 11:19 am (UTC)May/may not be your cup of tea, but maybe give it a shot?
Just ignore me if you've tried that kind of thing already.
no subject
Date: 2022-11-29 07:50 pm (UTC)Nothing terribly unusual there, I'm afraid -- I'm in a rather different field of endeavor, but similar age and anxieties.
Indeed, I seem to be slightly unusual among programmers my age for even trying to keep up with the young hotshots and the cutting edge, against the received wisdom that once you get past 40 of course you go into management. Being the only greybeard in the room is sometimes a little disconcerting.