That was the Decade that Was

I can't say the 2000's have been too bad for me, characterised as they have been by my becoming a professional and eventually - at least, at the moment - full-time novelist. I started this blog just a few months before I finally got a sniff at a book deal, and an actual deal another few months after that. I'd written my first (practice) novel in 1997 while signing on and waiting for a college course to start, and that led me to selling the second novel I ever wrote, Angel Stations in 2003 (published in 2004). I put the upfront payment from Tor into a deposit and got my first flat, finally moving out of the hideous dump I'd shared for several years with another writer (who himself had already moved out when he scored his own first deal). Apart from a brief break abroad, I've lived in that purchased flat ever since.

I finished Against Gravity, my second book, and saw that come out in 2005. My third, Stealing Light, didn't appear until 2007, but when it did, it came out in hardback and sold - and still sells - exceedingly well. Sequels seemed to be the way to go, so Nova War came along in 2009, and Empire of Light in 2010.

I started writing Nova War in Glasgow but finished it in Taipei, having them met Emma, my then-girlfriend and now-wife, when she was studying in Edinburgh.  Empire of Light was written in its entirety in Taiwan. I started Final Days there, but finished it back here in Glasgow, a few months after we returned earlier this year. And now that's done and dusted, and I'm a quarter of the way through its sort-of-sequel. The Thousand Emperors. I even had a short film of a script made by the BBC just prior to my departure to the Far East.

I rather hope that this is a trend that will continue over the next decade. There are certainly more things I'd like to achieve; writing a comic or graphic novel is definitely in there as a possible goal, although right now the thing that would make me really happy is a US deal for my books. But, still. All in all, a pretty decent ten years.