So, 2016 is down and will soon be dead on the floor.
This year I had a particularly good time working with Dan Watts and Garth Jones on a short comic for Flip-Out! trampoline arenas. That was a fun project and I am looking forward to working more with both of those two guys. Likewise, I had tons of fun working with my team for Gourmand Go: Hazz Purnell, Laura Renfrew, Gavin Thompson, Matt Kyme, Aly Faye, and Ben Byrne. The book is pretty much done now and it should be available next year.
Aside from the Flip-Out comic I have one piece of short (well, the longer side of short) coming out before New Year’s day, and that will be my total output for the whole year. Sometimes these things are out of your control. And sometimes not:
One of the most difficult things I did this year was pull my novel Shadowmancy before it was published, after it was typeset and ready to go. There were a variety of reasons for this, but in the end I was unhappy with the quality of the work and I’m going to have to tinker with it some more. Perhaps you’ll see it next year.
Stuff you will certainly see from me next year: my second novel, Faerie Apocalypse, to be published by IFWG. Also, the the new edition of The Sixsmiths will be back in shops in January, although it has been available from online retailers for about a year now.
I was on the radio twice in 2016, and both times were an absolute blast, despite the pants-wetting episodes in the preceding days. In January I was on RRR’s Graphic Nature program with Sarah Howell and Zoran Ilievski, and in August Wendy Tonkin invited me onto PBS’s Metal Genesis.
I enjoyed a bunch of stuff this year, although it’s been hard to keep current with popular culture given my diminished free time. Here’s a quick list:
Books: This year I read a lot of Australian work. I particularly enjoyed reading more of Devin Madsen’s Vengeance trilogy, Paul Rasche’s Smudgy in Monsterland, and Angela Slatter’s Vigil.
TV: Most enjoyable TV show was the new season of Ash vs Evil Dead show, in all its cut-rate, B-Grade glory. Daredevil season 2 was riddled with story problems, but the cast are so good as an ensemble that I didn’t really mind. I have watched a lot of children’s TV this year and my favourite programs for under 5s are Kazoops! and Ben and Holly’s Little Kingdom. I just wish they had more guns, demons and electric guitars in them.
I missed a lot of movies that I badly want to see (the Arrival, the VVitch, Rogue One), but of those that I did see I most enjoyed The Nice Guys and Hail, Caesar!
Motorhead’s Bad Magic was released late in 2015, but I’ve listened to it about a thousand times more than any other album I bought this year so I’m putting it on this list. Here’s my favourite cut from it. I can’t think of a more fitting farewell to the late great Lemmy Kilmister.