“2015 is almost over,” he says with a strange mix of relief and excitement. It has been a big year. It has flown by. Really flown by. And thank God for that. These posts are usually a mix of review/summary/what have I been doing/what are my plans. This post will pretty much be the same. The TL;DR version is that I watched some movies, I read some books, I wrote a bit, and now we’ve got another year of that to look forward to. This year saw a massive push from me to get a number of projects out there in the big, wide world. The Winter Princess saw a heavy push of submissions, as did Promethea Falling. As we stand now, neither have been picked up. There is only a small number of people still with the manuscripts, so unless something happens there, they are pretty much done and dusted. Both have their complete trilogies written, which while not a smart business decision, was definitely something I wanted to do creatively. Khraeos Waking turned out exactly as I wanted it to. The Midsummer Monarch probably is the weakest of the books I’ve written, but I was still pretty happy with it. Nothing some revision couldn’t fix. On the actual writing front, this year was quite small compared to 2014. Last year I wrote about 350,000 words. This year, I tackled the last little bit of The Springtide Knight, performed a number of major revisions on Promethea Falling and The Winter Princess and then wrote the first draft of Shadowbreaker. I’m in the middle of revisions for Shadowbreaker, which means I wrote very little this year. (I should mention here that this year has been a bit rubbish for health and general wellbeing, so that probably has a lot to do with it). I did write a few short stories, which were a bit of fun. But all-in-all I have probably written well under 150,000 words this year, which is actually a bit sad. Admittedly, I did focus on revisions, so it hasn’t been a year of no writing completely, but it is definitely a lot smaller than past years. By a lot. Next year will hopefully be better. I’m going to tackle some new writing once I’ve got the first lot of revisions done on Shadowbreaker. I don’t know what it is yet, but we’ll see what happens. I’ll have to get out my Excel spreadsheet again and start noting down my progress again. That seemed to help, and it fell by the wayside this year. How do I feel about this? A bit crappy. But this year saw me really work on the revision side of things on a number of projects, so hopefully that will help on the publication front. This year was pretty good for movies. Some of my favourite movies of the year were Big Hero 6, Inside Out, Jurassic World, Mockingjay Part 2, Mad Max and, of course, Star Wars: The Force Awakens. I have never been really that interested in digging into the extended universe for anything. The Force Awakens has kinda changed that. Also, TFA brought us Finn and Poe Dameron (or Finnimon Roll and Poe Baemeron). I set a goal at the beginning of the year to read at least 50 books. About 2/3 of the way through, I hit that goal, and adjusted it to 75. And because I missed listing one of the books I read on Goodreads, I have actually hit my goal. This year was also the year I planned to balance out my gender imbalance in my writing. My original goal was to have the balance completely even. This, naturally, grew quite hard to do because it meant (for the first little while at least) occasionally reading something I wasn’t in the mood to read, and basing my reading entirely on where I was falling behind. While this helped me discover some authors (many of whom appear in this list), it also meant that reading some books was a slog, because I wasn’t in the mood to tackle something like that at that particular moment. I quickly introduced a new rule: I would not let gender interfere with what I wanted to read. I would not go purely based on gender and instead be mindful. Considering the last few years, I had yet to hit any number higher than 10 for books written by females , or people who identified as female, (2014 only had 1) I wouldn’t beat myself up if I ended up erring on one side or the other. The goal was to encourage me to read more widely, and I have. It also gave me an excuse to re-read Harry Potter, which I think justifies the challenge alone. Of the 75 books, comics, graphic novels and manga, 33 of them were written by, illustrated by, or were created by women. Now that’s not absolute balance, but it’s a lot more than 2014 and 2013, and it has introduced me to a bunch of new authors I may not have tried so quickly. Here’s some of my favourite books I read 2015: A DARKER SHADE OF MAGIC by V.E. Schwab I ordered this book when I first decided to tackle the challenge, and when I actually researched the novel, I wondered what had stopped me from preordering it the moment it was announced? Magic doorways! Thieves! Multiple Londons! Bisexuals! My goodness, where had this book been?!? I read it on a day when work was stormed out, and I was stuck indoors, with no power and no warmth, and it only added to the excitement. THE THRONE OF GLASS SERIES by Sarah J. Maas Another book that got thrown onto the TBR pile when I decided to gender balance my reading list. The first book was enjoyable, but didn’t super-wow me, but I gave the second book a chance and LOVED it. The series is definitely one of my favourites, and I had a chance to meet the author in person, which only added to the excitement. THE GRISHA TRILOGY by Leigh Bardugo I finished the third book yesterday. The first book, with its different Grisha, political intrigue and Russian-inspired setting reminded me a little of my own Icebound Throne trilogy, if executed quite differently. I loved the books, though I did have a few issues with the conclusion. Still, that minor gripe couldn’t counteract my enjoyment of the rest of the series. I’m excited to pick up Six of Crows after hearing what people thought of it. THE PROVIDENCE OF FIRE by Brian Staveley The second book in the Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne really blew me away. I read The Emperor’s Blades quite quickly and after hearing the author discuss the book a little, Lawyers near you was excited to see how the story would progress. The last book comes out in March, and I am impatiently awaiting its arrival. THE CHAOS WALKING TRILOGY by Patrick Ness These books, you guys. Jesus H. Dammit I loved these books. They are going to be sitting on the top of my ‘must re-read every year forever and ever’ list. I can’t talk about my feelings for this series too much without giving away spoilers, but suffice it to say, the feels did ruin me. I also took up reading a lot of graphic novels/manga to try and break up the flow a bit, and give myself a fighting chance to reach my goal. I tackled Assassination Classroom (my favourite), Attack on Titan (my other favourite), as well as excellent comics/graphic novels like The Wicked + The Divine, Bitch Planet and Saga all of which I definitely recommend. Some honourable mentions go to Trial of Intentions by Peter Orullian, doing some really refreshing stuff. Shadows of Self by Brandon Sanderson, who continues to be amazing. And Binti by Nnedi Okorafor, whose books will definitely find itself on my 2016 TBR pile.