Today, I’m concluding my look-back at how 2018 went for me, professionally. Personally, it was terrible, but on a work front it was pretty great. If you haven’t already done so, you might want to start with Part One.
So, having already covered off January to June in the first part of this update, let’s jump straight back in with the second half of the year.
July
While the rest of the year was taking up with Space Team Universe books and my children’s titles, July saw the publication of the first in a new series – The Sidekicks Initiative. Inspired by my love of comic books, The Sidekicks Initiative is a superhero adventure novel with a difference – all the superheroes are horribly killed before the book even starts.
With them out of the way, the fate of the world rests in the hands of the heroes’ former sidekicks, who are largely powerless and mostly hopeless. When the villain who killed off the supers starts throwing his weight around, it’s down to the Sidekicks to save the day.
While not directly connected to Space Team, it’s very much connected in spirit. Both are about a ragtag group of very different individuals being thrown together. Both are written by me. Both are in the English language. Honestly, I should just have called it “Super Team” and been done with it.
August
The Zertex Media publishing empire was relatively quiet in August, although my traditionally published books kept coming. First up was the collected edition of my SuperMansion comics from Titan. Then, a little later in the month, UK publisher Barrington Stoke published my Anty Hero book.
If you haven’t heard of them, Barrington Stoke is a fantastic publisher based in Edinburgh who specialises in books for children with Dyslexia and other reading difficulties. Anty Hero was my first Barrington Stoke book, and they were a fantastic publisher to work with. They even took me out for cocktails at a hipster bar, and while the block of ice flavoured with ‘banana smoke’ I ordered was utterly revolting on every level, the gesture was very much appreciated.
September
If you thought two books in August was impressive, September went one better. This month I had two children’s books published, as well as the tenth book in the Space Team series.
Night of the Living Ted is the first book in my Living Ted trilogy, which continues in April with Revenge of the Living Ted. It’s actually based on one of the first children’s books I ever wrote, and features an army of evil teddy bears, two bickering children, and a karate-kicking Elvis teddy with a neat-line in jumpsuits. It’s illustrated by the annoyingly talented Lee Cosgrove (who, incidentally, also illustrated a book called ‘My Very First Space Book’.)
Published on the same day as Night of the Living Ted was the second book in my Spectre Collectors series, A New York Nightmare. It sees Denzel and Smithy, the heroes of book one, head to the Big Apple where they get caught up in more ghostly goings on. It features a giant ghost shark, a giant ghost Viking, and a giant ghost monkey. Not necessarily in that order.
BONUS FUN FACT! I just finished writing book three in this series yesterday. It’s called Rise of the Ghostfather, and will be published in September this year.
And then, of course, there was this baby…
Space Wasps ahoy!
Space Team: Sting of the Mustard Mines is the tenth book in the Space Team series, and the first that I didn’t design the cover for. Instead, cover design duties were handed over to the amazing Andrew Dobell at Creative Edge Studios, and I think he knocked it out of the space park.
The tenth book brought some big changes to the series, following the events of book nine. I won’t give anything away, other than to say it introduces a new villain, a new galactic threat, and a new status quo. By which I mean a new normality, not this Status Quo.
October
And in the tenth month, he rested.
Seriously, nothing happened this month except that I took the family to Orlando for three weeks and enjoyed some sunshine. It was lovely.
November
After recharging in Florida, I came back to work raring to go. There were no new Kindle or print book releases in November, but “Dead in the Water”, the third Dan Deadman audiobook, was released on Audible and iTunes. I haven’t mentioned audiobook releases in this roundup because I’m going to do a full post about the audio versions and the amazing Phil Thron, but since I had nothing else to report in November, I thought I’d give it a well-deserved mention.
Check out the audiobook here if you’re in the US, or here if you’re in the UK.
December
After beavering away all through November, I surprised everyone by publishing the 11th book in the Space Team series, Space Team: Sentienced to Death. (Note, this title does not contain a typo. It’s supposed to be like that, OK? Sheesh.)
As with the previous book, the cover for this one was designed by Andrew at Creative Edge Studios, and I think it’s the best cover yet. I was nervous about showing Cal’s face on the cover for the first time, but the response was overwhelmingly positive, so that was a big relief.
Here’s the cover in its full glory.
Run, Cal, run!
I hadn’t planned to write a new Space Team book during November, but the death of a close friend at just 40 hit me hard, and I found that escaping with Cal and the crew on a daily basis was a great antidote to grief. You can read a fuller explanation of this in the author notes at the back of the book which, if you haven’t already done so, you can get here.
And that’s it. That was all the writing-related stuff that happened in 2018, not counting various projects I started developing which haven’t yet come to fruition (Space Team comic, anyone?) In total across the year I make it ten books published (eleven if you count the collected edition of the SuperMansion comics), two comic issues (four if you consider that both were double issues, each containing two standard-length comics) and seven animation episodes. That’s a pretty decent haul, if I say so myself. I’m not sure if I can beat that in 2019, but I’m going to give it a fonking good try.
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Re: not a typo
That’s what Anne McCaffrey said about “Get Off the Damn Unicorn”. 8*)