As I sit down to write this, there are slightly more than 24 hours left before 2016 departs to no one’s regret. I’m not going to talk about politics (in the sf field or the wider world), nor will I recite a litany of celebrity deaths.
In the past I’ve given an overview about the things I’ve read over the past 12 months. This has not been a good year for reading. There was too much going on to keep up the pace I had been maintaining. The best book I read all year wasn’t fantasy or science fiction. It was a mystery, A Brilliant Death by Robin Yocum. The characters stayed with me for days after I read the last paragraph and closed the book. That doesn’t happen very often.
Overall, based on what I’ve seen, this hasn’t been a great year for publishing. The major publishers haven’t exactly set sales records this year. I’ve seen reports from indie authors that they’re not seeing the sales they’ve seen in the past. What this means, I don’t know. Maybe the market for reading material, especially genre material, is saturating. Maybe everyone has been too distracted by current events.
Things have ramped up both at work and at home. My son started high school, which has caused some time constraints ranging from attending more band events to increased homework help. Enrollment is up, which means my load, both in the classroom and outside, has intensified. The end result is less time to read, blog, or write my own fiction. I’ve got several projects that I’ve back-burnered. Hopefully I can get back to them once things settle down and all the holiday travel is over. More on that in tomorrow’s post.
In conclusion, 2016 was not a great year. It’s almost over. This is probably good thing.
