Writing in 2009

I suppose 2009 has not been a bad year.
I’ve had two Young Adult books come out. Annoyingly, though, they came out within three weeks of each other – one had been delayed for almost two years. I’ve also got a couple of academic papers under my belt. I’m certainly enjoying teaching creative writing at university level. The writing itself is still going quite well and I’ve still plenty of ideas. I just need to make sure I do get enough time to write. And I’m beginning to see what my retirement might look like.
Carrying on with Bridge House has been fun. We’ve got eight book out this year. It’s been a bit hard to keep to deadlines – we were ambitious, life events happened, and sometimes authors were slow to respond to edits or proof-reading – they too had life events and deadlines with other people. But we just about did it and our publications have been a delight. We continue to champion the short story. We begin to be recognised by other publishers and generally by the people in the world of books.
The Red Telephone took off in the summer – that is our imprint for Young Adult books and is in fact now publishing three of mine. We’ll be bringing another one out by another author in June 2010 – hopefully.
There are some exciting projects to look forward to next year – not least of all the animal anthology we’re doing to support Born Free. There’s also plenty planned elsewhere at Bridge House and The Red Telephone. And I have plenty of my own projects and plenty at the university. All good stuff.