Apart from the holiday traffic and wallblind idiocy of drivers whose ears go flat to their head as they stop in the middle of the road in utter hawkshadowed panic, this tends to be my favorite time of year. Besides the meridian at which I look back on the previous year and look forward to the next, for some reason it’s usually my busiest and most creative time of year. I always have more projects going on and more outlets for them.
Late 2009/early 2010 is no exception. 2009 was one of the best years of my life. ELEGY BEACH and ARIEL were reprinted, with the latter — a 26-year-0ld reprint, mind you — garnering reviews and strong sales, and with ELEGY BEACH doing, as far as I can tell, quite well also. I went back to SF conventions for the first time in a decade (and DJ’d a dance at WorldCon in Montreal), and found new friends in Cory Doctorow and John Scalzi, who are movers and shakers to make me feel I’m standing still. My wife went with me to Burning Man for the first time, and the event was amazing this year. My all-night DJ set onboard the Nautilus X art car was epic. My Groovelectric & Podrunner series didn’t see any fundamental change, but they stayed on top of iTunes Music Podcasts, and Podrunner made the iTunes Top 100 Podcasts list for the fourth year in a row.
2010 is starting off with a bang. Maureen and I are busily packing up the house to move to the East San Francisco Bay area at the end of this month. Normally I hate moving, but I’ve wanted out of Los Angeles for several years now, and we’ve both fallen in love with our new little town, so if the undeniable pain in the ass of relocating is the price of admission, I’m all over it. We love the community there, love the new (and much larger) house, and have lots of friends up that way, so there’s plenty of incentive. I think about what I’ll miss about Los Angeles and, other than friends, I draw a blank. Which is always a sign it’s time to go.
But good god I have a lot of books. And this is after getting rid of about 25% of them a year ago.
I have March 1 deadlines on three projects and have to keep the Groovelectric and Podrunner podcasts going, as well as revising one novel and working on the new one. I know it’ll all get done because god knows I’ve done it all before.
AVALON BURNING, the new Change novel, is proceeding slowly, but I’m really happy with it. The FERRY CROSS THE MERCY revision is stalled, I think because this is going to take a lot of concentration and uninterrupted sessions, and that ain’t happening right now. But it will.
Here’s my interview on KFAI public radio, aired on New Year’s Eve:
[audio:http://www.steveboy.com/audio/write_on_radio_12-31-09.mp3] (if this gives you a “file not found,” use the link below. This player app for WordPress absolutely sucks.)
I hope everyone had a great and safe New Year.