deeply shallow: 2021: A Year in Review

Saturday, 1 January 2022

2021: A Year in Review

2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2020

What can I say about 2021?

"I survived." (What else can anyone say about 2021??)

Writing-Related Things

Amok is out!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Which was variously called Berserker or The Weight of Strength on this blog, depending on which draft/version it was. But Amok is the final published title. It's currently available on most online retailers (in ebook & print), Black Dragon Books (UK/International Shipping), Teaspoon Publishing (Malaysia - now with GrabPay!), and Shopee (Malaysia). If you are Amazon-averse and based in the US, you should be able to request it at your local bookstore or library if they are supplied by IngramSpark or have Overdrive. :)

I was going to publish The Tale of the Hostage Prince (sometimes called The Weight of Secrets) this year as well until there were editing snafus, so that's tentatively coming out March 2022, with Absolution (previously pitched and griped about as The Weight of Sin) now slated for November 2022. I suppose I will get round to adding them on GoodReads sooner rather than later... or when I stop being a potato.

Here's this year's edition of our annual zine. My own story didn't get in because it was decidedly weird and not quite fitting the theme, but I was attempting something less pandemicy. Alas, everyone else was super pandemicy so it was hard to make it fit. Anyways, you can get NutMag 5: Lost on Shopee and on Google Play.

On not-my-writing (but stuff I worked on), my client is in The Malaysia Book of Records lol. Get her book here.

We made MYWritersFest2021 happen virtually! Jaymee and I did a thing!

I was on a GTLF session with Deric Ee talking about anthologies! You should be able to watch the replay on their Facebook page.

I can't remember anything else. I suppose if you remember on my behalf, you can leave a comment. haha.

Reading-Related Stuff

Here's my Year in Books. It's a drop from last year, but I was busy publishing a book and organising a festival and being very stressed.

I'm looking at my 5-star reviews for the year, but none of them jump out at me as strongly as they did in 2020. I guess I'd put these as my top 5, in no particular order:

The Long, Long Afternoon by Inga Vesper
Toyols'R'Us by Terence Toh
Strength (The Legacy Chronicles 2) by Lauren Salisbury
Mist Bound: How to Glue Back Grandpa by Daryl Kho
Future Perfect by Felicia Yap

I'll probably also give The Windward King by KT Ivanrest a mention because I just read it and I really loved it but I do not have the energy to write a review at this point in time so maybe I don't love it enough?? But it was a very, very good read!!!

Blog-Related Stats

Views - all-time

Look at that weird bump. Which is yay, I suppose, even though I haven't been as consistent at posting this year. Unless they're bots. Maybe they're bots. Oh wait, the spike is June - July, which was when I did the Amok launch & blog tour, so maybe that makes sense. Or maybe not, because the actual days are off. And another spike in November, a few days after I posted Lay Heong's thing. idk.