A Year In Numbers ... 14

At 14, this blog is now as old as Prince Jorg Ancrath when we met him in the opening pages of my debut novel!

Although I spent 23 years as a research scientist I never spent longer than 10 years at any one job, so I guess that makes "authoring" my longest employment.

Anyway, onto the traditional accounting:

It has been a very good 2024 all told!

I hope it's not tempting fate, but Celyn only went into hospital 4 times this year and I only spent one night sat up in a regular chair til breakfast of the next day. She did, sadly, start having seizures this year though, after a 12 year break where they were controlled. So, swings and roundabouts.

This post follows up from similar posts at the same time in 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012 and 2011 I record a year of ups and less ups. I take a minute to do the sums and raid the scrapbook.

I've now had my Patreon for more than 3 years and it has been great fun so far. The Discord is very active, and I've done a ton of critiques for the highest tier patrons.

Also - for tier 3+ people there are 7 of my unpublished books to download along with short stories and novellas!

The Book That Broke The World came out in 2024, and The Library Trilogy will conclude in April of 2025.    

In addition, I've published short stories associated with the trilogy. Three of them (Overdue & Returns (2 stories: Returns & About Pain) in ebook. And then a collection of those stories and one other (Tabula Rasa) that are available in Missing Pages as an ebook, paperback, or hardcover!

  

(cover art by Tom Brown (Trilogy art by Tom Roberts))

I also put out a collection of short stories for The Book of the Ancestor (ebook, paperback, and hardcover) and have put Road Brothers out in the US for the first time in paper form.

 
Tales of Abeth cover art by Francesca Resta who has done the art for the imminent Grim Oak Press Book of the Ancestor special edition omnibus! Road Brothers cover art by Pen Astridge.)

April 2025 sees the release of book 3, 

THE BOOK THAT HELD HER HEART.

And if you were to pre-order it (US, UK), I would stand in your debt!

Lies, damn lies, and statistics to follow:

Goodreads continues to bug out in major ways every week but soldiers on. This year I reached the 5,000 limit on friends and have 200 requests pending - so if you try to friend me and nothing happens ... you're in a queue.

The blog is bumping along around 1,000 hits a day, but I think social media has reduced blogs to a shadow of what they were - we did reach 5 million visits in total (across the blog's history) in 2024, which is quite a milestones.

I'm still on Instagram. And have added Threads and Bluesky (which has really taken off) to the failing Pintrest and Tumblr (I'm easy enough to find on them and too lazy to put links). 

And finally, as ever, our favourite cesspit of witch hunts and fake news: Twitter, where I continue my crawl forward with an extra 2,500 followers this year, despite Mr Musk's continuing attempts to incinerate his 44 billion dollars. Should be noted that I lost about 900 followers in the post election exodus to Bluesky, where I gained about 3,200 followers in the same period.

Many thanks to all my readers for keeping me going! I hope you all have happy holidays and that 2025 is good to us all!

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