The Year in Review (2024)

 

Year Nine of this enterprise has now drawn to a close, and this is my annual review of progress. Last year I was able to report a gradual shift in emphasis from short form to long, as single-author volumes became more of a practical proposition, and I have spent considerable time this year in pursuit of this goal.

Crimson Blade took much longer to deliver than expected, but went to Hiraeth at the end of October and is due at press any day now as I write this. The Remarkable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes Volume 1 was released by Belanger Books earlier this year, and Volume 2 has now been delivered, along with Of Old Gods and Dreamlands, my H P Lovecraft anthology. In progress at this time, is Sherlock Holmes: Ravensgate for release in 2025, and Tales of the Middle Stars Volume 1, to appear with Jay Henge Publishing in Sweden also during the coming calendar year.

The bulk of this work has been tackled in the last six months, which says something about current productivity levels. I also could not have done it without the amazing input of Jen Downes, my editor and companion in creative efforts. We have co-written some stories this year, and have more collaborations to come.

Now for the raw data:

In the last nine years, I’ve made 3295 submissions (176 in the last twelve months, a marked decline from the 270 last year, which was itself well reduced from the previous year). I have 266 placements (12.39:1 submission/acceptance ratio, up from 12.78:1 last year, which was up from 14.53:1 the year before that, which bettered 15.11:1 in the previous year). Over five consecutive years this ratio has tightened down, suggesting that while overall numbers are not high, I am more efficiently targeting my work to markets that really want it.

With the shift toward single author volumes I have had less time and inclination to blanket the short story market with submissions, so my total number of submissions active at any one time has fallen. I have averaged forty-something active submissions logged at Submission Grinder during the year (32 at this point, including some old ones that must be dead by now—I have periodic clear-outs), sometimes as high as fifty, sometimes thirty-something.

These figures also indicate 2861 rejections or other null-responses (that tells you how slow things have been in the last year, a surprisingly small increase on the previous total), giving an overall rejection/acceptance ratio since 2016 of 10.75:1—improved for the fifth year running (2023: 11.65:1, 2022: 13.18:1; 2021: 13.52:1; 2020: 14.27:1).

During 2024 I made 180 submissions, almost a hundred less than the previous year, which was itself way down on the year before. This alone is a good indicator of my shift in emphasis. I had 21 acceptances, my second-poorest year in terms of total numbers since the very beginning. My submission : rejection ratio was 8.57:1, slightly poorer than last year’s 7.23:1. So, although total numbers were low, I was targeting material quite effectively, and my mystery writing was an almost 100% acceptance result.

Things seem to have been slow on a day to day basis, and that’s reflected in the figures. An average of 17.38 days elapsed between acceptances in the year, almost twice as long as last year (which had many more acceptances). Again, this is a function of the shift away from concentrating on short stories, which have by and large attracted disappointing pay scales. I recently scored a pro publication, and if I could do that more often things would be different, but it constitutes a statistical outlier at this point.

I completed 23 new stories in 2024, 15 of which were Sherlock Holmes pieces, almost all of which went directly into print with either Belangers or MX, or were written to complete The Remarkable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes Volume II. I produced 42, 040 words of science fiction, fantasy and other genres, while my Sherlock Holmes short stories total 159, 200 words, for a grand total of 201, 240 words produced during the year. This is a markedly greater output than either of the two previous years, and does not count novel work.

At the end of 2023 I expected to write some eight Sherlock Holmes stories in the coming year, and in fact almost doubled that figure. I will make no firm predictions this year, but write to the markets as they present themselves.

As mentioned above, my second title with Belanger Books, The Remarkable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes was released not long after midyear, and I have already delivered the second volume, for release when schedules permit in 2025. The third volume of the series is over half complete at this time, as are two other Holmesian anthologies. I am approaching 50, 000 words on my second Sherlock Holmes novel at this time, also scheduled for publication during 2025. My next volume coming up for release should be Of Old Gods and Dreamlands, my H P Lovecraft collection.

I have recently put together a list of projected work over the next three years, including projects for my established group of small presses but also embracing a number aiming into the professional arena. I have a novel near completion which I would be happy to offer out for agency representation, and another project to begin with which I could sound out local publishers on a non-agented basis. These are all ‘test-the-water’ ventures, and success in any particular area will shape the way things move from that point.

My total accepted wordcount now stands at 1, 390, 888 words, not counting novel length projects.

That’s it from the statistician for another year. 365 days from now will mark ten years since I decided to take the writing game for a spin, and I hope to have new milestones to report by that point, including extra small press releases plus, I sincerely hope, agency representation to the professional marketplace, with pro contracts in the offing.

Cheers from South Australia,

Mike Adamson

Header image royalty free from Unsplash, Aaron Burden photo

Keeping Output High

 

I have sorely neglected this writing blog but there’s a good reason—my output has never been higher nor more focused. In short I’ve been busy with the business of writing, and forgot to update my commentary in the process!

Just before Christmas I delivered my H P Lovecraft anthology to the publisher (keeping their ID under my hat at the moment, at least until the Kickstarter goes live), who have launched a horror enprint and seem to be doing very well with it. And very soon I’ll be delivering my second Sherlock Holmes anthology to the same company as produced the first, with my next writing priority being to finish my second Sherlock Holmes novel for them also. Taken together, those three projects are about a quarter of a million words.

A few days ago I worked up a ‘to-do; list of future writing projects. Two of the three projects above headed that list, then other projects ran on—and on—and on. I projected writing over the years 2025 to 2027 inclusive, and came up with something like eighteen book projects, being both novels and anthologies. This is a tremendous amount to contemplate in a three year period, but it’s not all to be built from scratch.

Three new Sherlock Holmes anthologies are already half or more filled. One is an SF collection requiring only two stories to finish it. One is a novel needing only a couple of chapters and an epilogue. Another is a novel to be derived from an existing movie script, another a finished novel to begin the rounds after a final polish pass... That cuts it down to something like about three projects to work up from scratch in any one year, and that’s doable.

My fervent hope is that a professional agency will be in the mix before too long, and some of these projects can enter the professional stream. Of course, that doesn’t mean the top-end semi-pro endeavour will falter in the slightest, and it will be my great pleasure to continue to send a considerable output to market via that stream.

This all comes down to an output of something like a quarter of a million words per year, not counting incidental short story submissions and placements. But I would have to say that the burgeoning of the book side of things has already toned back the short story aspect. It’s far more productive and far less frustrating to work up a book for a publisher who is eager and waiting for it, than to continue to swim upstream on the rejection roundabout, wondering if you’ll ever see a professional payday.

I’ll post my annual roundup of stats on January 7^th, marking nine years since I launched this writing endeavour, and there’ll be some telling numbers on the way things have shaped up lately.

Cheers, and thanks for reading,

Mike Adamson

Rolling Out The New One!

Okay, I’m rolling it out here late—because I’m so out of touch with the blog there are times I forget it’s clamouring for new posts!

The fact is there’s so much on in Real Life it’s a wonder I can think of specifics at all... Between my second Sherlock Holmes novel half way along and other projects in the offing, I thought I had a lot on, but a serious medical diagnosis in the family changes everything, and there’s nothing you an do but put what needs to be done first, and do it with a will.

Yes, as you see from the header, my second Sherlock Holmes volume is now available. The Remarkable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is my first anthology, collecting ten stories from the pages of Belanger Books anthologies, Strand Magazine and Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, plus brand new stories never seen before.

This is an anthology of my canonical stories to the tune of around 100, 000 words, and was rele4ased in September, 2024, after a very successful Kickstarter campaign that saw the project funded many times over.

The adventures span the years 1881 to 1889, and deal with entirely mortal cases—no supernatural themes or thematic crossovers. All being well, this will be the first in an ongoing series—as indeed is my novel. A second volume is almost complete in terms of contents—I need only two more stories to flesh it out, and The Remarkable Adventures Volume Two will be in the pipeline, though quite when it’ll put in an appearance is an open question.

More certain, my second novel, titled Ravensgate, is in development and should be in the 2025 publishing schedule; and at this point a collection of my Lovecraftian cosmic horror writings is also slated for a 2025 appearance, the manuscript being in preparation at this time—I wrote the foreword this morning!

Here are some useful links. Go here to view the Kickstarter page, which features a marvelous promotional video trailer, courtesy of the multi-talented Brian Belanger:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1606726313/the-remarkable-adventures-of-sherlock-holmes

And here is the Amazon purchase pink, for hardback, paperback and Kindle:

https://www.amazon.com/Remarkable-Adventures-Sherlock-Holmes/dp/B0DJ8LWQVK/

Eight Years and Counting

I remember like it was yesterday—the first confident submission of this campaign to get my foot in the door of the short story market. I sent a Roman era ghost story to a magazine called Liminal. I was full of hope, but of course inexperienced—green, if you like—and had no real idea what to expect. I’d made a few experimental submissions in the previous months but wasn’t counting those. Well, Liminal didn’t take the story, nor did they ever take anything from me, and ceased publication a couple of years ago. But that ghost story placed four days ago with Black Beacon Books, in a freshly-polished form, so my original confidence was vindicated at last!

At the eight year mark I’d have to say I’ve raised my game. I’ve tuned what I’m doing to better match the market, certainly I’m focusing on those parts that are most welcoming: perhaps a third of my expected placements in the coming year will be period mystery, or speculative fiction in a certain group of markets where I’ve encountered my best success. That still leaves two thirds on the submit-and-see principal, so nothing has changed in that respect.

However, I am beginning to move into novels and single-author anthologies, and this is the main step-up, or direction change, in my modus operandi.

This is my eighth annual review of progress/state of play post, and 2023 has laid the foundations for ambitious steps to come.

Here's the raw data:

In the last eight years, I’ve made 3119 submissions (270 in the last year, a lot less than the previous year). I have 244 placements (12.78:1 submission/acceptance ratio, up from 14.53:1 last year, which was up from 15.11:1 the year before that, which bettered 16.008:1 in the previous year). It’s gratifying to see this consistent positive decrease over the last four years, as my rate of placement is improving across the board despite all influences of market, economics, style or whatever).

However, my total number of submissions in play has eroded considerably, as my attention has been focused less on short story writing and more on long-form work. Submission Grinder shows some 32 submissions in play at this time, of which a few early ones are likely dead or in limbo, and this figure is less than half my tally for this time last year. These figures also indicate 2843 rejections, giving an overall rejection/acceptance ratio since 2016 of 11.65:1—again, an improvement for the fourth year running (2022: 13.178:1; 2021: 13.52:1; 2020: 14.27:1). The statistician in me sees these numbers and despite any negative feedback on individual works from individual markets—I certainly get it—I know I must be doing something right.

In the 365 days of 2023, I made 275 submissions (well down on the 368 of last year), of which 38 gained acceptances (my second-best year ever after 2021 with 41). This is a submission/rejection ratio for the year of just 7.23:1, a dramatic increase over last year’s 11.5:1, which improved from 2021's 12.375:1, and, most importantly, also edges out 2020's 7.67:1. While it may not have felt like it on a day to day basis, I seem to be doing better than at any previous time.

Average time between acceptances in Year Eight was comfortably down from 2022’s 11.4 days to just 9.60 days—not quite as good as 2021’s 9.125 days: it seems hard times are still with the reading and publishing world. The long dead patches still occur, and with fewer submissions in play I’ve noticed that the previous pattern of long and short period rejections don’t cluster as they used to—I simply go more periods with neither acceptances nor rejections, just...nothing.

One or two semi-professional, placements have come along—with NewMyths, for instance, always a pleasure.

Rather shockingly, I find my new fiction productivity has been at its lowest ebb since the process began, just 16 new stories completed in 2023, half of which are Sherlock Holmes tales. They total 131, 793 words, down from last year’s 175, 871. This is balanced perhaps by my reworking of older pieces to find homes.

I have 300 stories registered at Submission Grinder, a modest increase over last year’s total, though excluding different versions of the same story which in a few cases are listed there for my own reference.

Once again, Sherlock Holmes is my hottest area of endeavour. I have an estimated eight stories to produce in 2024, all of which have target marketplaces and excellent chances of acceptance. I now have eleven placements with Belanger Books anthologies, and have found a home also with MX Books’ ongoing Anthology of New Sherlock Holmes Stories series. I have placed a third story with Strand Magazine, and an confident of others in future.

My novel Sherlock Holmes: A Tradition of Evil, was released by Belanger Books in August, 2023, and marks the beginning of a new chapter in this endeavour. It has been well received so far, with predominantly five star reactions at both Amazon and Goodreads, and I should be writing my second novel during 2024. My Sherlock Holmes short story output for 2023 was 78, 083 words, slightly up on last year, and excluding a single story as yet unfinished.

I also have three single-author anthologies in development: a collection of my vampire tales forthcoming from Hiraeth Books in the US, which is now at an advanced stage of readiness, plus Holmesian and Lovecraftian volumes also on the table for this year. Also, a chapbook is due out soon from Black Hare here in Australia, a psychological thriller titled If Thine Eye Offend Thee. This will be in format with my previous release with them, The Salamandrion.

My total accepted word count stands at 1, 248, 985 words—this including all reprints and solicitations, as well as podcasts—there have been a few (links on my author site).

The Inspector Trevelyan Mysteries has scored an extra placement, a tale appearing shortly in Black Cat Weekly. A George Trevelyan novel is now very much on the cards, probably for 2025, which on the back of an expanding small press track record may be a flag-carrier for the next level of this enterprise.

That's the view from this particular keyboard as Year Eight melds into Nine. Short fiction is beginning to give way to long form work, and my small press credits are expanding (both novels and collections based in large part on preexisting work, though always with some new material for freshness). I hope a year from now I have more big steps to report!

Cheers, Mike Adamson

Royalty-free image from Unsplash.

A Busy Year, and More to Come

I have soooo neglected this blog! The truth of the matter is that the blog was created to support my writing career, serving potentially as an affidavit of my presence and reality as a writer for those in the publishing trade, and as my career has grown busier I’ve had less time to reflect those events on the blog. (Plus I’m never sure how many people are or aren’t reading here—am I keeping this record pretty much for myself? I would like to think a few readers do indeed drop by!)

2023 has been a busy year! While the regular review roundup is due on January 7^th, which will be the eighth anniversary of my launching my bid to be a professional writer, here is so much to reflect on.

This year saw my Sherlock Holmes novel A Traditional of Evil released, a genuine milestone. I’ve written a fair few novel-length projects in my time, but this is the first genuinely professional outing to see print, and there’ll be more to come, with a second novel to be written in 2024. Coming early in the year there’ll be a second chapbook from Black Hare Press, the psychological horror piece If Thine Eye Offend Thee, and I have so far lined up what should be three single-author anthologies for the coming year.

The last story is now on paper for a collection with Hiraeth Publishing in the US in the horror/action/supernatural field, and the material is being brought together for not one but two anthologies with Belanger Books—more on these when the time comes.

The launch of my author website some months ago was another big stride, and there are updates on the way, a major one in the next round providing a wealth of reading.

So despite how quiet I’ve been, things are indeed busy, and big things are coming!

Cheers, Mike Adamson

Royalty-free header image from Pixabay

Recently Read: The Alternate Martians by A. Bertram Chandler

Here is a novel I first read as a child of ten years or so, and indeed it was the same copy. We have a 1965 Ace first edition, in poor condition (this will probably be the last time it's ever subjected to a reading, and there are better copies out there to be had). I last read it probably some decades ago, and had only a few memories to draw on, but this was the sequel to Chandler's The Coils of Time, which I reviewed in February, 2017, so it was a logical choice.

Chandler (1912-1984) was one of our favourite science fiction writers in the far-off days of childhood. Not that he was writing for children at all, some of his material was probably a bit strong for kids in retrospect, but standards were far less, well, prissy, in those days, and we got to read the books on the shelf.

Chandler was fascinated by what today we call the Multiverse concept, and explored it several times. I first heard of the notion in Science Fiction Monthly in 1974, when it was described by the old term “parallel worlds,” or “moving sideways in time,” and it would seem the latter was the concept that struck Chandler. The precept established in the previous novel was that a machine designed for time travel might, due to its own imperfectly understood nature, send a traveller sideways as surely as backward, thus accessing another stream of reality. In that event it was to a Venus where planetary catastrophe had not unfolded as it did for our Venus, giving rise to a habitable world on which a neo-Burroughsian adventure could unfold. The degree to which Chandler was devoted to the vintage science fiction of Wells and Burroughs can be gauged by the sequel, which constitutes a full-blown homage, with some original twists for good measure.

The original characters make an expedition from Science City on Venus, to Mars, taking the “Time Twister” machinery with them, with the object of trying to discover if writers like Wells and Burroughs—Leigh Bracket is also mentioned by name—were not simply creating their fantastical visions of these places, but remembering them, a kind of distorted telepathic vision transmitted across the membranes separating parallel universes (“coils of time” as Chandler called them). The intention was to send a small party through the device into this other reality to explore. However, interference from the ship's inertial drive, operated simultaneously with the time machine, sent not just the explorers through, but the entire ship...

The world in which they appear is a hostile one. Lowell's canals exist, pumped water from the high latitudes feeds cities closer to the equator, but the inhabitants of this planet are drawn from two sources—War of the Worlds (Wells's Martians, with their tripods, handling machines, heat rays and gas weapons) and the other Martians of John Carter fame, the six-limbed green ones, like Tars Tarkas. Then there are the humans, kept as slaves (and food) by the “Masters,” the tentacle-bearing, owl-eyed things that drive the tripods. These humans are the resilient Cockneys of London, scooped up by the Martians in their rampage and transported back to Mars because they were useful.

This delightful mishmash avoids being a pastiche because it paces a new spin on every aspect. Bill Carter and Delia Doris are crude but true-hearted Cockney tearaways living in rags in the Martian deserts, and Well's bacterial apocalypse for the invaders is seen to be an embellishment upon the time-spanning memory, the wishful thinking of the author—the alternative would of course have been a pessimism that made the original tale not worth telling.

The theme is revolution, the arrival of visitors from a parallel universe the catalyst for change that will rage across the planet as the oppressed humans and green Martians rise up and sweep away the stagnant, indolent overlords. Regular heroic fare, then, filled with swords and violent, brutal action—stories as they were told long ago.

Chandler's professional background as a merchant sea captain comes through very strongly. His space vessel is run on merchant marine lines, with bridge, engine room, staffing requirements—and every malady of the sea trades made manifest in space: owners versus master, liability issues, crew versus automation, civil regulations, autocratic minor functionaries throwing their weight around, a Scottish engineer who thinks he knows better than the Captain... It's rather heartwarming to see the real maritime experience of the mid-20^th century perpetuated into the future—somewhat naive perhaps but it certainly spoke volumes about human optimism.

How Chandler treats women is another matter, and here he is a product of his time. There are only two main female characters, both stunningly beautiful (of course) and treated on a umber of occasions in an inherently dismissive way by narrative or dialogue. This novel was published in 1965, when women were still bound by pedantic male social custom, and to act out of the ordinary in any significant way was somewhere between risque (think Bond women, maybe?)  and unacceptable/unbelievable, so for these women to be pilots, explorers, fighters, and self-assertive, was actually quite forward-moving. For this reason, I'm prepared to forgive the broader cultural narrative of the age showing through.

The Alternate Martians was published in an Ace Doubled (M-129) back to back with Chandler's Empress of Outer Space, another great read from a great age of space opera. Can it still be found? I'm aware of at least one reissue in a new edition, and there are copies of the original to be had fairly cheaply on eBay. As with The Coils of Time, it is a work to be read in light of the age when it was written, and enjoyed as enthusiastic storytelling, with some clever twists.

Mike Adamson

A New Website, and Other Developments

This blog has been rather neglected for one reason and another, with nowhere near as many posts as it had the its early days. It's more than time for an update, and the big news must be either of two headlines. Let's start with my brand new dedicated author website!

Check out The Worlds of Mike Adamson for the most comprehensive overview of my writing you'll find anywhere. Here are pages dedicated to my work by genre, with listings of completed works and their publication histories, plus new essays. Also links to my my nonfiction work, journalistic pieces, book reviews (the ones here on the blog), interviews and such—there are more of them out there than I thought, and quite impressive when brought together. Purchase links are provided for all published works throughout, along with the covers of publications containing those stories—there are lots!

The site was built by my sister Jen Downes, who writes html like plain English. She is also an artist—the site is richly illustrated with science fiction, fantasy and horror artwork, generated in Photoshop and 3D/CGI software. Jen is also a dab-hand at prompting an AI to generate something usable too. This latter technique was used to generate substitute images within the site format to stand in for those online publications for which there are essentially no cover illustrations to present as links to the material.

There are dozens of free reads out there—places where my stories appear in online archives and may be read without a paywall. These are gathered together in a coordinated link-list, with new artwork and teasers, for ease of access.

The site has already been updated once, with extra material on the miscellany page—interviews, commercial author pages and such.

I could not be happier with the site, nor more grateful to Jen for bringing it together. There'll be rolling updates, so check back from time to time for what's new!

In other news—my second single-author volume with Belanger Books is officially go! The title has not yet been finalised, and the publishers have asked me to play things close to the chest for the moment, but there'll definitely be an exciting new Sherlock Holmes volume from me in 2024!

Next post coming shortly—a new review of an old book!

Cheers,

Mike Adamson