Apple-Obsessed Author Fella

In The Corpse Of 2012, The Fungal Seedpods Of 2013 Bloom Bright

The years pass like ships in the night. One pulling into harbor. The other drifting out to sea.

Of course, the way time is, 2012 will drift out to sea and hit the carcass of a frozen whale. It’ll punch a hole in the hull. Then the USS 2012 will take on slushy water and begin to sink. Its inhabitants will drop into the churn where they will all be summarily consumed by ICE SHARKS.

Point is, 2012 will soon be gone.

And 2013 will take its place.

Which means — time for the requisite looking backward to look forward post!

Truth is, 2012 has been one helluva year.

This is the year I really became that thing I always really wanted to be: a dude who gets to write novels for a living (aka, “a novelist,” or “an author,” or, “that bearded, pantsless recluse”). I’ve been a professional writer for, sheesh, almost 15 years now, and many of those years were spent as a full-time freelance writer. But this is the first year I can feel 100% comfortable tacking on “novelist” to the ol’ resume. And to do it full-time? To support my family?

Holy fucking wow.

This year alone, I published:

Blackbirds: in which snarky damaged psychic Miriam Black can see how you’re gonna die.

Mockingbird: AKA the continuing adventures of that snarky, angry psychic, Miriam Black.

Dinocalypse Now: two-fisted pulp featuring heroes, apes, Neanderthals, psychic dinosaurs.

Bait Dog: teen detective/vigilante Atlanta Burns solves a murder by way of a dog-fighting ring.

Bad Blood: an e-novella featuring the return of Coburn, a vampire in Zombieland.

Plus, got to help put together the supremely bad-ass Don’t Read This Book collection for Evil Hat, featuring some incredibly potent writer-fu.

The Miriam Black series really got a lot of attention and so far has sold well beyond my expectations. Then both Dinocalypse Now and Bait Dog were the product of two kickass Kickstarters that proved to me what a valuable asset crowdfunding will be to the creatives of the future (sorry: THE FUTURE; sounds better when you caps lock that shit).

Plus, 2012 is a year where I signed on for bevy of new books. Some already written.

I’ve got:

The Blue Blazes: In which criminal Underworld meets the mythic one.

The Cormorant: Miriam Black is back with a face full of murder and Mommy Issues.

Heartland, Book One: My “cornpunk” YA adventure novel (new title soon announced).

Heartland, Books Two & Three: THE CORNPUNK CONTINUES.

Gods & Monsters: Unclean Spirits: The gods are in exile on Earth! Hijinks ensue!

Beyond DinocalypseOur heroes trapped in a pulp-sodden psychosaur dystopia.

Dinocalypse Forever: Our heroes must travel to where — er, when — the psychosaurs began!

Harum Scarum: Atlanta Burns in, “Fear and Loathing in Dark Pennsyltucky.”

Holy hell, that’s a lot of books.

(Also: holy hell, it means my 2013 is going to be at near-psychotic levels of busy-ness.)

But, of course, it isn’t all about the books.

This site, terribleminds, is still going strong as an ox on bath salts — 2010 I had 438,000 views, 2011 saw that number jump to 1,474,000, and 2012 saw that number jump again to 2,650,000. (I mean, it’s no Scalzi’s Whatever, but whatever.) Plus, I got to do a redesign and get most of what I wanted out of it — all for a handful of stress-tangled man-hours and $45.00. I’m very happy with it and my hope is that you readers are, as well.

This year I also got to release both 500 More Ways To Be A Better Writer and 500 Ways To Tell A Better Story and both seemed to land well — particularly the latter, which contains a bunch of stuff I think really clicks. The writing books continue to sell nicely, many of them hopping in and out of the Top 20 books on writing at Amazon.

Life progresses. It progresses in a way I can find little fault with — it’s been a hard year for the world, I know, but honestly, I’ve been really fortunate on a personal level. I hate to use the term “blessed,” because I’ve no idea who is doing the blessing (Jesus? Shiva? The Large Hadron Collider?), and I also like to think I’ve earned some of the fortune, but there’s no denying that life and luck have been kind to me even when I’ve had no hand in it.

We got a new puppy.

I went to WorldCon, met a bunch of great people — a list of names too endless to recount, but c’mon, Adam Christopher, Gwenda Bond, Laura Lam, Kim Curran, Mike Underwood, Saladin Ahmed, Myke Cole, LA Gilman, Elizabeth Bear, Mur Lafferty, Ramez Naam, Wes Chu, Seanan McGuire, so many inspiring minds that really put more coal in the creative furnace. Plus, I reconnected with an old friend while there. FTMFW.

I spoke at the very lovely and highly-recommended Crossroads Conference in Macon, Georgia. (Macon’s tagline is, “It’s Hotter Here,” which I thought was trademarked for Hell, but apparently Macon snatched it up first.) New friendships made: Delilah (aka “Derlerlah”) Dawson, Jeremy Foshee, Chris Horne, Paul Barrett, Matt Jackson.

I also got to speak at both Storyworld and Writer’s Digest West in Los Angeles. Read at Noir at the Bar with a handful of talented blokes. Got to meet JC Hutchins, Johnny Shaw, Eric Beetner, Greg Bardsley, Caitlin Burns, Jay Bushman, again another endless list of talented humans. (And I was in LA in April, too, for the Blackbirds launch, where I got to finally meet Sabrina Ogden and Priscilla Spencer! Seriously, I know some of the most awesomest people.)

And 2013 promises some new and interesting things, too — something-something film stuff, something-something international travel, something-something new writing book (with physical copies!), something-something doom-laser robot that will destroy the Eastern Seaboard with a transmedia boombox made of human corpses.

You know. THE USUAL.

Thanks to all you crazy kids for hanging around here and listening to me rant. Hope you see fit to keep coming back in the new year, to keep reading my bloggerel, and maybe checking out my books, too. I only get to do what I do because of you fine people out there in Internetsville (aka “Pornopolis”). We creators are only as good as the audience that carries us, as the friends who support us, as the family members who love us.

Oh, and speaking of family:

Let’s finish up with a brand new rockin’-out B-Dub video: