Just thinking about this year makes me dizzy. 2011 has been the most eventful twelve months of my life since I left home for university in the autumn of 1984. Bits and pieces of things have already found their way into some of the stories I’ve written this year, but obliquely. I’m the kind of writer who must write, who insists upon it as a right, no matter what else intervenes, and as the year comes to an end I find I can map it in stories, that the stories will be forever associated with certain events and a certain time, even when the narrative itself does no more than hint at it.
Among many other items of good news, I am happy to report that I have written a novel’s-length of stories this year. All of these should be appearing next year in various publications, to include Undertow Press’s biannual anthology Shadows and Tall Trees, the new NewCon anthology Dark Currents, Arkham House’s The Arkham Garland, Kelly Link’s fabulous zine Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, and one or two others that I’m not at liberty to mention yet. All the pieces I’ve worked on this year represent significant steps forward for me, and I’m greatly looking forward to them being out in the world. More news on all of these as and when I have it.
Parts of the year still feel strange and painful, leaving London on the night the riots broke out, for instance. This is something I won’t talk about, because there’s a story here I want to write, and it’s still maturing, but the memories of that first hot week of August remain intense. Other memories are intensely happy, most of all the publication of Chris’s wonderful twelfth novel The Islanders, and seeing him launch himself into the new book immediately afterwards. (The Adjacent is progressing brilliantly, even as we speak.)
The work of other artists is as always an encouragement, an inspiration and a pledge. Highlights of 2011 must include the Coen brothers’ magnificent film True Grit, Lars von Trier’s Melancholia, Ben Wheatley’s Kill List, Kingsley and Sharp’s Black Pond and Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris. (2011 saw us having a bit of a Woody Allen binge, actually. The man is a magician, a born writer sans pareil, and I worship him.)
Films are often easier for me to codify than books, because I don’t make them, and then there’s this awful greed-reading to contend with – there are seldom fewer than five books by my bed at any one time and usually more – but I do know I began and ended the year with exceptional reads (David Vann’s Caribou Island and Sarah Hall’s The Beautiful Indifference respectively) and that somewhere in the middle I had the privilege of discovering Lila Zanganeh’s joyous book about Nabokov The Enchanter. Older works discovered or rediscovered have included Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace, Ford Madox Ford’s The Good Soldier, Tim Krabbe’s The Vanishing and Peter Stamm’s In Strange Gardens.
My own new book is coming on.
I want to end this post by saying thank you to everyone who drops in on this blog, and to the many people who have offered their support and appreciation for my work. Having readers is a privilege, one I hope I shall continue to earn.
Happy New Year, everyone. Have a good one. Glenfiddich time fast approaching…..