The Wrap Up

READING

I read 127 books this year, a small increase from last year's 116. 77 of them were e-books, so while that makes up the majority of my reading, I still read quite a few print books, too, and I expect that rough split to continue. 33 of the 127 were review copies. I wasn't able to review all the books that were sent to me, but I read and blogged about as many of them as I could and I'm sure some of the others will show up on the blog in the future. 21 of the 127 were books that I edited and published. In looking through the list, I noticed that I didn't read any books published in 2015 by the so-called Big Five. The only new books I read from traditional publishers came from Kensington and Baen, companies that have distribution deals with the Big Five but are independently owned, and there were only a few of those. Everything else I read was either small press, self-published, or decades old. This wasn't intentional. I'm certainly not boycotting the Big Five. But it's an unavoidable fact that they're publishing less and less that I want to take the time to read these days, while there's so much good stuff coming out from those other sources that I couldn't even hope to keep up with it. The important thing to me is that I don't think I'll ever run out of good books to read.

Which brings us to my top ten favorites of the books I read this year, in alphabetical order by author:

LIE CATCHERS, Paul Bishop

THE CRIME OF OUR LIVES, Lawrence Block

THE SHOTGUN RIDER, Peter Brandvold

TARZAN THE TERRIBLE, Edgar Rice Burroughs

THE BIG DRIFT, Patrick Dearen

101 ESSENTIAL TEXAS BOOKS, Glenn Dromgoole and Carlton Stowers

FIRE WITH FIRE, Charles E. Gannon

TURN ON THE HEAT, A.A. Fair (Erle Stanley Gardner)

RIVER RANGE, L.P. Holmes

WAITING FOR A COMET, Richard Prosch

My short list had 17 books on it, and I could have added another dozen or more that were pretty close. So it wasn't easy getting this list down to 10, but there they are, for what it's worth.

WRITING

As those of you who have read yesterday's post are aware, I wrote just over a million words this year, the 11^th consecutive year I've reached that mark. That breaks down to 12 novels and 7 shorter pieces of fiction, most of them novelette or novella length. Right now my plan is write at least that much in 2016. I'll need to if I'm going to keep up with the projects I've committed to do. It's a lot of hard work, but I'm still having fun so I don't see any reason to stop now.

PUBLISHING

Rough Edges Press continues to occupy a significant portion of my time. With plenty of invaluable technical help from Livia, along with some great covers, REP brought out 9 books in the Blaze! Adult Western series, along with a number of reprints and originals from Stephen Mertz, Ed Gorman, John Hegenberger, James J. Griffin, and David Hardy. We published three original anthologies, the two WEIRD MENACE volumes and the Alternate History anthology TALES FROM THE OTHERVERSE. The Blaze! series will continue in 2016, along with a full slate of original and reprint novels and collections, and we'll also have a big science fiction anthology next summer, if all goes according to plan. More details on that later. UPDATE: I added a picture of all the books REP published in 2015 to the top of the post.

So you can see there's plenty going on to keep me busy. I guess I stay out of trouble that way. Many thanks to those of you who have stuck with the blog for another year. I'll be around.

Fire With Fire - Charles E. Gannon

This science fiction novel by Charles E. Gannon was nominated for a Nebula Award last year (as is the sequel this year). That honor was well-deserved, in my opinion, because this is the sort of adventurous, big-idea SF that I grew up reading and loving.

The protagonist, Caine Riordan, is an investigative journalist about a hundred years from now. He's on the moon, probing into the mysterious activities of a retired general and a former British commando when somebody jumps him and puts him into cryosleep for thirteen years. When he's finally awakened, he discovers that the two guys he was investigating are the top brass in a ultra-top-secret intelligence agency—and they're going to press him into working as a reluctant secret agent investigating reports of a sentient alien species on a distant planet. Earth has developed a faster-than-light drive and established a few interstellar colonies, but so far they haven't run into any other species. Caine doesn't particularly want this assignment, but he's missing some of his memories from before he was put into cryosleep and his captors/new bosses dangle that information in front of him like a carrot to get him to work for them.

This is just the beginning of a long, very complex plot. FIRE WITH FIRE is a kitchen-sink book, but in a good way. It's a First Contact novel with a lot of mysterious layers about the history of the galaxy. It's an espionage/intrigue/corporate shenanigans novel, and these sections read much like a well-done contemporary thriller. It's an epic space opera with the threat of interstellar war looming massively over everything, including some elements that put a grin on my face as they reminded me of the work of E.E. "Doc" Smith.

What ties it all together is Caine Riordan, who's a great character, tough but flawed, extremely smart, and able to navigate not only through ambushes and other dangerous action but also hold his own in all sort of diplomatic intrigue on the galactic level. Gannon populates his story with plenty of other good characters, too, but Caine serves excellently as the focus for most of the book.

It's hard to talk about FIRE WITH FIRE because there's just blasted much in it, all of which works pretty well. It's a much longer book than I normally read, but it held my interest all the way through with no problem. This is science fiction in the classic tradition and one of the best books I've read so far this year, so it gets a very high recommendation from me.