It's that time where we go once around the sun again and take a look back at the year just gone. I guess I should do the same, but I don't have a lot of nice things to say.
As many of you know, I was made redundant from my job back in June, and I've been struggling to find another job since then. There seems to be a large culture of ghosting job seekers at the moment, during the application and even the interview stage, and it really takes a toll on you. On top of that, there's a lot of companies returning to working in the office, meaning that remote and even hybrid roles are hard to come by. That makes things difficult when you can't drive and public transport is unreliable. I sometimes wonder if job boards and railway companies have some kind of secret deal to pitch you jobs that are anywhere but local, so you have to buy tickets. It's a mess, but anyway.
In terms of writing, I recently set myself up on Itch, a website for selling indie games which has since developed a growing market for e-books (good when people don't want to give Jeff Bezos money). While I can't sell print books on there, there's a lot of potential for digital sales. There's also the opportunity to take part in bundles with other creators. I got involved in the first one of those in September, including The Lady's Favour in a "Talk Like a [Queer] Pirate Day" bundle, organised by Felix Graves. After all, I established in "The Pirate King" that Kestrel and Scar are in a matelotage (a sort of civil partnership), and I myself am asexual, so my work was eligible for it.
I stepped down from the committee at the Writers' Summer School in August, and am now looking to spread my wings a bit in search of other events (the job situation combined with the financial commitment means that's not on the cards next year). In this regard, I recently expanded into author signing events, assisting my good friend Val Penny at her stand at two such events: "Sugar and Spices" in Sheffield in July, and "Authors at the Armouries" in Leeds in October.
As for other projects, I started drafting a new story for First Draft Fall called "Escape from Crab Island". This is intended to be a prequel story in the Kestrel and Scar series, depicting how they first met. I hope to work more on it next year, but things have been very up in the air lately. Other than that, I managed a couple of poems and republished a serial I wrote a while back.
Happy writing, and see you in the new year.
No comments:
Post a Comment