End of the year reflectiveness

December 31st 2008 at 3:28 pm

Some end of the year ego fun:

Blood of the Muse has a ‘best of 2008‘ and has Pepper honorably mentioned as ‘Best Returning Character in a Novel,’ labels me ‘Most Improved Author’ and puts Sly Mongoose in for an honorable mention for ‘Most Surprising Novel’ and labels it with ‘Best Science Fiction Novel’ saying “could anything be more fun than zombies in space? Sure, throw in ass-kicker extraordinaire Pepper to battle the undead buggers and you have yourself the best science fiction novel of 2008.”

Bookgasm put out a list of their 5 best books of 2008. At #2 is Sly Mongoose:

Buckell doesn’t need a huge page count for his books, but he deinitely uses the pages that he has for maximum impact. SLY MONGOOSE is the third novel set in the Caribbean-infused future he kicked off with CRYSTAL RAIN and RAGAMUFFIN, and while knowledge of the backstory is an added bonus here, newcomers won’t be lost in this hard-edged actioner that pits a hard-ass cyborg against a seemingly endless tide of alien zombies. That’s awesome in and of itself, but the cultures and characters that collide in SLY MONGOOSE make it so much more than a by-the-numbers zombie explode-athon.

At #1 is Fast Forward 2, the Lou Anders edited anthology that Karl Schroeder and I contributed a story to. Yay.

IO9 also today just put Sly Mongoose on their Best SF Books of 2008 list.

Halo: The Cole Protocol is still going gangbusters, placing on the NYT list and moving many copies, which warms the cockles of my heart. With all the predictions of bookstore doom, I keep expecting to see a big drop off.

One of my brothers in law also reported, for the first time in two years, seeing hardcovers of my books in the Toledo Borders (Sly Mongoose), which was nice to hear.

Catching up fun:

I have a brand new chair. It’s a Sealy, with microfiber. It has a waterfall edge, which helps not dig into the hamstrings and thus add blood clot risk. The memory foam seems nice, and very importantly, the arms are able to be lowered far out of the way of elbows and arms, thus getting rid of a big ergonomic risk. So far it seems nice.

I’ve also put together my large list of things that need done for the next year: my game plan. It’s large. Putting the whole thing onto a sheet of paper that lives by my monitor reminds me how aggressive I am.

On Friday I turn 30. Looking back over 2008, and the last handful of years, it’s been a pretty amazing run. People have a habit of marking the decades, which is something I’m also guilty of.

From the ages of 20-30 I achieved many milestones that I had wanted to when I…

…was accepted into the Clarion SF/F workshop.
…sold my first story to a major SF/F magazine and started selling stories regularly to magazines and anthologies
…won a quarter of the Writers of the Future contest
…was nominated for the Campbell Award for Best New SF writer
…got married
…got an agent
…had a story in a year’s best anthology (Hartwell)
…wrote my first novel, and sold it (Crystal Rain)
…purchased a home
…moved to being a full time writer/freelancer
…purchased the sports car I always wanted
…was nominated for a Nebula and a Prometheus for the second novel
…published 2 novels in 2008
…was asked to be Guest of Honor at a convention
…saw my name on the NYT bestseller list

With kids on their way, I’m sure 30-40 will be another interesting set of firsts and milestones. I have more milestones and goals targeted for my career, but 2009 will be interesting. It’ll probably be my first year I don’t have a novel out, as the next one is probably planned for 2010, but I’ll be hard at work building up an inventory. It’ll be a year that determines how I launch the next 10 years, and how I follow through with the momentum I’ve built up.

So like I said. Interesting.

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