Writing Goals
First draft of Silver Darling completed
Guest blogs for 2025 confirmed
Reading Goals
Reduced next year's reading list a bit further
As the year draws to a close and I do my annual look back over my reading and writing accomplishments, I have to remind myself that whilst I may not have met all the targets I set at the beginning of the year, I set them while I was still labouring under the illusion that life would just carry on as normal while my husband was working away. However, it took me the best part of a year to work out a routine which allows me to continue working while not drowning under a sea of housework and general life tasks. Getting a cleaner has helped massively with this, but it's more than that - I've always known I work better with a target to aim for, but using Pacemaker to properly plan the writing time for the month ahead has helped massively. If I could find a similar one to help plan my editing time, that would be amazing!
What has also been a huge gamechanger is planning - I've been getting better at this with each book and am now firmly in the plotter camp. With a detailed plan in place and dedicated time to write, even with school runs and meetings thrown in, I can get a first draft written in about six weeks.
Whilst I may not have drafted Book 3 of The Courts series, I have instead put together a collection of poetry and short stories ready for publication. This will be published in February and is a bit of a step into the unknown as my poetry isn't something I share a lot, but I'm hoping this will push me to write more in the future.
From a reading perspective, it's interesting that the audiobook debate raised its head again at the end of the year. I've long accepted the role audiobooks play in my reading life and thoroughly enjoy them. However, there are still people out there who don't class it as reading - to me, it doesn't matter how you read, as long as you do! This year, I've been doing a lot of mixing, particularly with longer books. I find by both listening and reading, I get through the book a lot quicker and get less frustrated by how long the book is taking me to read, or by how sewing is taking me away from reading. If I listen to a book as I sew, I get the best of both worlds!
The publishing side of things is also going really well and we realised we had already published enough books to make an advent calendar this year. We have at least another seven books scheduled for release next year as well, which is fantastic. So, even though my expectations might have been a little unrealistic for 2024, in some ways, I've exceeded them and everything is still on schedule, so bring on 2025!
Reviews
Romance
Rivals - Jilly Cooper (Added a surprising amount of background detail to the TV series, which made some scenes make far more sense!)
Crime
Murder In Bloom - Rosie Sandler (Third in the Gardener Mysteries series. Thoroughly enjoyed it. Full review can be found here.)
Contemporary
Life Hacks For A Little Alien - Alice Franklin (Older, wiser narrator, giving advice and comfort to her younger self. Full review can be found here.)
Norwegian Wood - Haruki Murakami (It's always interesting to read books in translation because it gives you a different perspective on other cultures. Murakami is regarded as one of the foremost Japanese authors and this is the book which made his name internationally.)
Classic
The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemmingway (Very short book where not a lot happens, but in such a charming way that you don't mind!)
Historical
The Fisherman's Gift - Julia Kelly (Beautiful and haunting tale set in the north country, pulling together love in all its guises. Utterly compelling. Full review can be found here.)
Wolf Hall - Hilary Mantel (Audiobook. Early life of Thomas Cromwell, piecing together known facts with Mantel's excellent storytelling.)
When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit - Judith Kerr (Another book based on real life events from Kerr's childhood escape from Hitler.)
The List Of Suspicious Things - Jennie Godfrey (Set at the height of the Yorkshire Ripper's reign of terror in Yorkshire, this was inspired by the author's father's connection to the Ripper. We were still feeling the effects of this when I was growing up so I can only imagine how terrifying it must have been for women at the time.)
At The Edge of the Orchard - Tracey Chevalier (Book Group pick. Loved the book, hated the main characters in the first half. Their children were so much more interesting and consequently the second half of the story was much more engaging.)
The Museum of Innocence - Orhan Pamuk (Mix of audio and reading. Fascinating book which becomes metafiction at the end. I love the author's dedication to his craft in creating an actual Museum of Innocence for readers to visit in Istanbul! It's a story about the dangers of obsessive love and the difficulty in navigating the demands of differing cultural influences.)
Sci-Fi
The Day of the Triffids - John Wyndham (Audiobook. Not a genre I'd normally choose to read, but thoroughly enjoyed this.)
Non-Fiction
Beyond Magenta: Trans Teens Speak Out - Susan Kuklin (Whilst it was interesting to hear from the teens in their own words, some of what they said revealed their own prejudices not just those of other people. Some came across far better than others.)
White Mughals - William Dalrymple (I found this quite hard going, as what I was interested in was the relationship between James Kirkpatrick and Khair-un-Nissa and although this was the main selling point of the book, there was far more about the British in India in general.)
Blackpool Tower A History - Peter Walton (Far more financial information than I needed, but learnt lots about the Bickerstaffe family.)
Fantasy
Meet Me At The Surface - Jodie Matthews (Set in Cornwall, draws on Cornish mythology to create a genuinely unnerving story. Excellent.)
Book of the month?
This month it has to be The Fisherman's Gift because it's the one which stayed with me the longest. It is an utterly beautiful story and deserves to do really well when it is published.
Book Of The Year?
I narrowed it down to three books: The Fisherman's Gift, Water Moon and Remarkably Bright Creatures. The first two are achingly beautiful stories, which prompt the reader to think more deeply about life and its challenges. However, in the end, I went with Shelby Van Pelt's Remarkably Bright Creatures, simply because the concept was such a clever one. I don't know anyone who has read this book and not fallen in love, not only with Marcellus, but with octopi as well. I have always wanted Whitby jet jewellery and as a direct result of this book, I now own some in the shape of an octopus - I have my very own Marcellus!
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