Year 2024 Round up and looking forward

31/01/2025

Looking Back

2024 was an insanely busy year – not just for writing and releases but, between a lot of European conventions and Worldcon coming to Glasgow, I felt my feet didn’t touch the ground for most of it.

What I’ve Done

Whilst I can’t really go into what I was working on through that year – publishers preferring to run their own reveals closer to publication date – the actual releases for ’24 were something of a record for me.

Novels:

Alien Clay – alien ecology meets human tyranny; resistance, body horror, division and union. Solidly in my weird alien territory, exploring a world where evolution has followed very different paths to our own.

Service Model – Mad Max starring C3P0, a robot butler trying to serve tea at the end of the world. Definitely channelling Douglas Adams with this one, exploring the illogical lengths that rigid logic can take you to.

Days of Shattered Faith – Tyrant Philosophers book 3. Can you be a good person if you work for the bad guys? (hint: not really). – Note the US release of this will be 2025 I think. Joe Wilson continues to turn out absolutely beautiful covers for this series.

In addition, the first ever audiobook of Spiderlight also came out this year!

Novellas:

Saturation Point: Just because we make Earth uninhabitable for us, doesn’t mean something isn’t out there. Something of an eco-horror, and the first of the Terrible Worlds: Transformations sequence (like previous novellas, books that are thematically linked whilst being narratively independent).

On the Shoulders of Giants: (Warhammer Age of Sigmar) One man and his ogre and his gun against way too many rats. Writing for Warhammer is always a high octane experience and the protagonist duo in this one was great fun to write for.

Narration:

The audiobooks I narrated for Service Model and (long-awaited) Spiderlight came out this year and seem to have gone down very well. Also a big vote of thanks for Ben Allen (Alien Clay) and Emma Newman (Saturation Point) and David Thorpe (Days of Shattered Faith) for their superb audio work.

Series:

For those who are counting, and maybe nominating, Tyrant Philosophers happens to be eligible for the best series Hugo in 2025…

Short stories:

Really a lot of short stories this year, unusually for me. They’re listed below and a few are free to read online.

Discipline Problem (Parsec), Woodmask (Uncanny - Free), Paved with Gold (Heartwood Anthology), Human Resources (tordotcom), Obstructive Nodes (The Utopia of Us), Speak Friend And Enter (Amazing Stories - Free), The Job Market (Mtls World - Free)

Given there’s around a two-year cycle from writing to publication, this doesn’t reflect what I’ve actually been writing, but suffice to say I’ve been flat out from January to December working on new stuff that should be announced over the next year.

Thank you to all my readers for picking up and enjoying what I’ve put out there (and especially everyone who’s commented positively on my audio narration, as that’s a little more outside my comfort zone!)

Audible

What I’ve enjoyed reading

I don’t read half as much as I’d like to, nor do I recall as much as I should of what I’ve read, but here is a representative sample of books and graphic novels I’ve enjoyed, and recommend.

The Siege of Burning Grass – Premee Mohammed – a war story about a pacifist in a very weird world. Absolutely majestic characterisation and storytelling, and a really fascinating setting. Her novella The Rider, the Ride and the Rich Man’s Wife is also extremely good.

The Raven Tower – Ann Leckie – a unique fantasy from the great SF writer. A story about gods from the gods’ point of view as well as the mortals. Politics and religion, all the things we don’t talk about.

Lake of Darkness – Adam Roberts – Another of Roberts’ trademark high-concept philosophical SF books. Black holes, time and space, utopias and the nature of evil. As always, scintillating and intellectually stimulating stuff.

Starter Villain – John Scalzi – an enormously entertaining comedy – what happens if that weird relative whose funeral you attend turns out to have left you his global crime empire in his will?

The Vengeance – Emma Newman – her long awaited return to print. Vampires, pirates, musketeers and some sharp social commentary. Some top notch writing from one of my favourite authors.

Rare Flavours – Ram V, Filipe Andrade – mythology, monstrosity and cookery. A beautiful, wistful and often bloody-handed story of a love affair with food and culture focusing on a wonderful, terrifying protagonist.

Lackadaisy – Tracy Butler – Prohibition era speakeasies in St Louis but everyone’s a cat. I love this series so much (3 volumes out to date). It has so many wonderful characters, bound together by a shared past now shattered into pieces. By turns hilarious and melancholy. My wife loves it too.

Third Voice – Evan Dahm – Dahm’s current ongoing webcomic is an incredible work of fantastical imagination – a world that’s still unrolling as the story proceeds, but is spiked with maddening clues and hints to an enormously rich creation. I’ve loved all of Dahm’s work ever since his Rice Boy but this is something special.