{"id":24,"date":"2016-12-13T15:08:00","date_gmt":"2016-12-13T15:08:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2023-10-09T14:58:21","modified_gmt":"2023-10-09T14:58:21","slug":"2016-the-year-wed-mostly-like-to-forget","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.munchkinstein.co.uk\/index.php\/2016\/12\/13\/2016-the-year-wed-mostly-like-to-forget\/","title":{"rendered":"2016: The Year we&#8217;d mostly like to forget."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Well, hasn&#8217;t 2016 been a truly terrible year? War, politics, death have all been busy this year which makes me doing a wee review of my writing feel somewhat unimportant. I entirely understand if you have more important things on your mind.<\/p>\n<p>That said, there has been the odd nice thing this year. I got engaged for one.<br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"344\" src=\"\/\/giphy.com\/embed\/Udgq93hSbG3iU?playOnHover=true\" width=\"480\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/giphy.com\/gifs\/doctor-who-classic-william-hartnell-Udgq93hSbG3iU\">via GIPHY<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Another nice thing was my writing. It has been very patchy this year with the muse coming on me in fits and starts but I did get three stories published.<\/p>\n<p>First, in January was The Past Does Not Watch Over Us, a story of science, General Relativity and willful stupidity. That can be found in&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.thespeculativebookshop.co\/e-book-available-now\/\">The Speculative Book<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Next up in May was More Certainty In Your Shopping, a story of how to cope with the apocalypse while not believing everything supermarkets tell you. It can be found in &nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.kzine.co.uk\/\">Kzine Issue 15<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Then, in September the Glasgow Science Fiction Writer&#8217;s Circle celebrated their thirtieth anniversary with their anthology&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.lulu.com\/shop\/neil-williamson-and-elaine-gallagher-and-cameron-johnston\/thirty-years-of-rain\/paperback\/product-22870981.html\">Thirty Years of Rain<\/a>&nbsp;I managed to sneak a wee collection of passive aggressive letters into it under the title of The Lodger.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m deeply happy with all of these.<\/p>\n<p>I also had a great time at conventions (waffling about writing rather than doing it, obviously) and even had a couple of reading occasions which were great fun, if nerve-wracking.<\/p>\n<p>Looking forward, next year is due to start brightly as I have a new winter story coming out in KZine in January. Have no fear, I&#8217;ll annoy you about it when it does.<br \/>\nBeyond that the aim is to keep on keeping on. I have a first draft novel roughly three quarters done that needs finished and several stories I&#8217;m hawking around the place so here&#8217;s hoping that I can find the time for them.<br \/>\nI&#8217;ll also be going to Worldcon in Finland and must say I am very much looking forward to it. A place I&#8217;ve never been.<\/p>\n<p>As is now tradition I&#8217;ve added a new story to the blog for you to read. It&#8217;s a story of fairy cakes called Unexpected Visitors that I got published a few years back and if you&#8217;ve not seen it before it can be read&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/munchkinstein.co.uk\/wordpress\/p\/unexpected-visitors-brian-m.html\">here<\/a>. It includes a free recipe for some very nice cakes.<\/p>\n<p>I hope you all have a good festive period and an improving New Year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Well, hasn&#8217;t 2016 been a truly terrible year? War, politics, death have all been busy this year which makes me doing a wee review of my writing feel somewhat unimportant. I entirely understand if you have more important things on your mind. That said, there has been the odd nice thing this year. I got [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-freebie","category-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.munchkinstein.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.munchkinstein.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.munchkinstein.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.munchkinstein.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.munchkinstein.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.munchkinstein.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80,"href":"https:\/\/www.munchkinstein.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24\/revisions\/80"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.munchkinstein.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.munchkinstein.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.munchkinstein.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}