A big Thank You to everyone who supported my work in 2020 – I’ll see you for more in 2021…!
What I Did In 2020…
Annual
Something Borrowed (2020 Edition)
Another year and another check in with the UK library service, as my Public Lending Right numbers for 2019 are tallied up! As always, my thanks to all the hard-working people in our libraries for supporting this vital part of our culture.
Libraries made books available to me when I was growing up and couldn’t afford them, and every writer (not to mention editor, illustrator and all the other folks involved in making books happen) owes them a debt not just for stimulating readers but also for the magic of the PLR…
Here’s my regular PSA on the PLR:
If you are a writer/editor/illustrator/etc, a resident of the UK or Ireland and you ever need a reason for donating your books to the library – on top of all the obvious ones like promoting reading and supporting this valuable and increasingly undermined public service – this is it.
The PLR is a system where authors who’ve written books that are in public libraries get a little revenue each time somebody borrows their works. It’s a way to repay writers who won’t be earning a royalty from a sale in a bookstore.
The PLR office pay a nominal fee based on how borrowed you were – and in the interests of fairness, you can’t earn more than around £6000, so the big names don’t get to hog all the money.
The PLR and our libraries are constantly under threat from government cutbacks, so if you are a writer or a reader, please do your bit to help support both as best you can.
Here’s my Top Ten Library Loans of my novels for 2019 (with 2018’s position in brackets)
1 (-) Ghost
2 (2) Exile
3 (1) Nomad
4 (3) Garro: Weapon of Fate
5 (4) Sisters of Battle: The Omnibus
6 (5) Ghost in the Shell
7 (6) Peacemaker
8 (-) Sight Unseen
9 (10) The Poisoned Chalice
10 (9) Deadline
Ghost joined my Marc Dane thrillers Nomad and Exile at the top of the chart this year, with a combined 27,589 loans! Most of the rest of the chart stayed the same as last year, just shifted down a place, but out of nowhere my Star Trek Titan novel Sight Unseen (first published back in 2015) popped up to take the #8 spot. And once more, Jack Bauer shows that he’s a hard man to get rid of, as my 24 novel Deadline stayed in the top ten for the 5th year in a row!
As always, thank you to everyone who supports their local libraries and borrowed my books in 2019!
2K19 Movies
My final end-of-year wrap-up blog covers my movie experiences for 2019…
I beat the previous year’s target of one film a week with a total of 60 viewings (not counting a bunch more re-watches), and once more my love of massive, loud and shiny blockbusters shows through. Nearly half of my movie diet was action flicks, which isn’t a surprise to anyone who knows me. I also binged most of the films in the Sniper series and a few fast-car movies of (let’s be generous) variable quality…
My top picks for 2019 were The Villainess, Upgrade, John Wick 3 and Hotel Artemis. Special mentions also to the documentaries The Rise of the Synths and What We Left Behind.
Here’s the full list:
Ready Player One, Aquaman, Spielberg, Proud Mary, The Hunter’s Prayer, Red Sparrow, Altitude (aka Hijacked), Rampage, Captain Marvel, Deadpool 2, Skyscraper, Incredibles 2, ART4SPACE, Hotel Artemis, The Equalizer 2, Avengers: Endgame, Black Water, Super Troopers 2, Damascus Cover, Upgrade, The Meg, Venom, Death Race: Beyond Anarchy, What We Left Behind, Dunkirk, Spacewalker, The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part, Bumblebee, John Wick Chapter 3: Parabellum, Ralph Breaks The Internet, Project Gutenberg, The Girl in the Spider’s Web, Spider-Man: Far From Home, Stratton, First Man, Fast & Furious: Hobbes & Shaw, Bad Times at the El Royale, Crazy Rich Asians, Deepwater Horizon, The Predator, The Commuter, Mile 22, Assassination Nation, Sniper 3, Widows, Jet Attack, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, Mortal Engines, Sniper: Legacy, Sniper: Ghost Shooter, The Rise of the Synths, Sniper: Ultimate Kill, Need For Speed, Overdrive, Redline, Sicario 2: Soldato, The Villainess, 12 Strong, Crypto, Domino [2019]
2K19 Games
My third annual year-end blog is all about the games…
I played a couple less titles this year than in 2018, but still kept my PlayStation 4 as the console of choice.
This year I also decided I’d include the non-digital games I played alongside all the others.
I spent the most time online with my clan-mates playing The Division 2 and saving Washington DC from destruction.
My top picks for 2019 are Far Cry New Dawn, Control, Astroneer, Observation, and my top board game choice is the excellent lo-fi sci-fi solitaire title Deep Space D-6.
Here’s the full list:
Steep, The Spectrum Retreat, Anthem [Beta], The Division 2 (including Private & Open Betas), Apex Legends, Rogue Aces, Call of Duty Modern Warfare Remastered, Just Cause 4, Far Cry New Dawn, Before I Kill You, Mister Spy, Ghost Recon Breakpoint (including Techincal Test Alpha & Private Betas), Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel!, Borderlands 2 (PS4 version), Project Madison, Horizon Chase Turbo, Sniper Elite 4, Deep Space D-6, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, Tinderblox, Home on Lagrange, Observation, Dangerous Driving, Outer Wilds, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare [2019], Colt Express, Scythe, Star Trek Chrono-Trek, Wacky Races: The Board Game, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, Astroneer, Control, Titanfall 2.
2K19 Books
My second annual year-end blog looks at my reading habits for 2019…
In 2019, I used the Reading Challenge counter on Goodreads to set myself a target of one book a week, and I made that with a solid margin (although a bunch were short audio books, so that might be cheating a little…) Science fiction titles won out over other genres, but thrillers were a close second, and I also got some good non-fiction reading in as well.
My top picks for the year were Eric Haseltine’s unexpectedly page-turning true life thriller The Spy in Moscow Station, Adam Hamdy’s Black 13 and Lightless by CA Higgins.
Half-Horn (Josh Reynolds), The Deserter (Justin D Hill), Expectatio (Matt Keefe), Skyjack (KJ Howe), Vox Tenebris (Robbie McNiven), Agent of the Throne: Blood and Lies (John French), The Heart of the Pharos (LJ Goulding), Children of Sicarius (Anthony Reynolds), Titan’s Bane (Chris Dows), The Geld (George Mann), Agent of the Throne: Truth and Dreams (French), Deadly Cargo (James Patterson with Will Jordan), The Way to the Stars (Una McCormack), Sea of Rust (C Robert Cargill), Learn WordPress In A Day (Acodemy), Sleeping Giants (Sylvain Neuvel), Waking Gods (Neuvel), Only Human (Neuvel), The Chain (Adrian McKinty), Buy a Bullet (Gregg Hurwitz), Unsold TV Pilots: The Greatest Shows You Never Saw (Lee Goldberg), The Little Book of Iron Man (Roy Thomas), Hot Wheels (Paul Biedrzycki), Reno 2: The National Championship Air Races (Mike Jerram), The Looting Machine (Tom Burgis), Why Johnny Can’t Speed (Alan Dean Foster), Hunted (Patterson with Andrew Holmes), The Shock Doctrine (Naomi Klein), The Janson Option (Paul Garrison), Killing It (Asia MacKay), Absolute Zero (Patterson with Ed Chatterton), Heist (Patterson with Rees Jones), Party Animals (David Aaronovitch), Boss Fight Books presents: Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic (Alex Kane), Lightless (CA Higgins), Cold Storage (David Koepp), The Undefeated (McCormack), High Rollers (Jack Bowman), Broken Dawn (Alex Irvine), The Spy in Moscow Station (Eric Haseltine), Alien Isolation (Keith RA DeCandido), To Kill The President (Sam Bourne), Star of the North (DB John), The Robert Ludlum Companion (Martin H Greenberg), The Man Who Stole The Cyprus (Warwick Hirst), The Nursery (MacKay), X-Planes: North American XB-70 Valkyrie (Peter E Davies), X-Planes: TSR 2 Britain’s Lost Cold War Strike Jet (Andrew Brookes), Black 13 (Adam Hamdy), Scorpion Strike (John Gilstrap), Red Strike (Chris Ryan), Cobalt Squadron (Elizabeth Wein), Sixteenth Watch (Myke Cole), Remember Me (Amy McLellan), False Value (Ben Aaronovitch), Deep State (Chris Hauty), Brothers in Blood (Amer Anwar), The Enterprise War (John Jackson Miller), The Beast Inside (Darius Hinks), Iron Devil (CL Werner), Heroes For Wargames (Stewart Parkinson), Alone (Joe Parrino), Guardians of the Whills (Greg Rucka), Spark of the Resistance (Justina Ireland), Alphabet Squadron (Alexander Freed)
Nineteen’d
It’s time for my annual end-of-year wrap-up post…
…and as we swing into Space Year 2020 (which always seemed like the distant future to me as a kid), I’m working hard to maintain a positive outlook on things. A lot went on in 2019 that required me to find a new normal, with the big changes wrought in 2018 still reaching their level and a whole lot of bigger events way outside my control casting a long shadow. In times like this, it’s always good to stick with what you know, and I stuck to writing and working hard – with a few breaks here and there to help keep me (relatively) sane…
2019 marked the launch of this very website you’re looking at – the “version 4.0” of my ongoing digital presence, and it’s been ticking along quite well so far. I’m planning to continue to expand the site as time goes on with more content, more frequent blogs, and perhaps a digital storefront too, if I can find the time to put it all together.
This site launched with Rough Air, a free downloadable ebook novella from my Marc Dane action thriller series (find it Here) and the response to that from my readers was very encouraging!
Marc also returned in 2019 with Shadow, the fourth novel in the series, and the paperback edition is in stores right now if you didn’t catch it in hardcover.
I spent several months of last year working on the next Marc Dane adventure Rogue, and you’ll be hearing more about that in the run up to the release this summer.
My other writing gigs in 2019 fell into three distinct camps…
First, some new fiction and reprints from Black Library’s Warhammer 40,000 and Horus Heresy sagas – Heart & Soul, The Buried Dagger, Lantern’s Light and The Chamber at the End of Memory, along with a complete omnibus edition of all my 40K Blood Angels stories and a new audiobook edition of my Sisters of Battle novel Hammer & Anvil; second, new video game work in The Division 2, Dark Future: Blood Red States and the forthcoming Bleeding Edge and Phantom: Covert Ops; and thirdly, a personal milestone marked by my first ever comic script projects, writing stories for the venerable British war comic Commando.
I have to say the most memorable of these were Phantom and Commando – the former because it’s my very first full-on virtual reality game, and the latter because I’ve always wanted to try my hand at writing comics.
Working in VR and in comicbook formats threw up very different and very interesting challenges for me, and I’m pleased to have had the opportunity to tackle them and stretch my skill-set!
Outside of work, this year was a busy one in terms of places visited, too. 2019 started with a working tour of bookstores all across the UK in the run-up to the launch of Shadow, and I followed that up with appearances at Noireland in Belfast, Thrillerfest in New York City, the inaugural Capital Crime in London and Destination Star Trek in Birmingham. I turned my NYC visit into a working vacation and met lots of great people in the US thriller community, and I took the opportunity to make research trips to Berlin and Portugal as well. I indulged my love of fast jets and heavy iron with RAF Hendon’s Cold War aviation tour and Biggin Hill’s Festival of Flight (all good source material for future Commando scripts, I reckon), and of course my new obsession with synthwave music drew me to shows by The Midnight, FM-84, Timecop1983 and a screening of The Rise of the Synths.
But how did I round out my year? Well, it’s too soon to talk specifics right now, but something big is on the horizon…
Stay tuned!
