A year in review, briefly, and my best books of 2019

2019 was a big, steaming pile of crap for us. I won’t go into details, but we lost a family member early on. Hot on the heels of that was the premature arrival of our little girl and four months of commuting and living in hospital beside her.

Just when we thought the year would end without anything else going wrong, we have the house broken into and get cleaned out. Including my car.

But forget the negatives (easy for me to say!) I wrote just over 615,000 words last year, so this year should be closer to that elusive million. I’ve partnered up with Aethon Books, and if you aren’t following them yet then you need to, because they are producing some of the absolute best sci-fi/fantasy/LitRPG on sale today.

I’ve set some serious goals for 2020 and plan to have thirteen-yes, thirteen-new books published. There’ll be another After It Happened with an RC Bray audible to follow. There’ll be new collaborations with Chris Harris and Nathan Hystad, new audiobooks from Ray Porter and Luke Daniels as well as the end of the Toy Soldiers and Defiance series and other stuff you’ll just have to wait for..

I’ve set some serious goals for 2020 and plan to have thirteen-yes, thirteen-new books published.

I’ll leave you with my best reads of 2019, which has been difficult to narrow down to just three.

Very few books can bring on a real emotional response, but the omnibus edition of Craig DiLouie‘s outstanding series is one of the most unexpected bargains of the year. The 6 books, narrated by RC Bray, move at such a pace that there are no wasted words. DiLouie has a knack for wonderfully descriptive prose without losing the interest of the reader for a second. I’m not ashamed to say that the post script of this audio left me emotional.
I didn’t even read the blurb before I downloaded this. I picked up on a lot of chatter about Hayley Stone and needed a new audio on the fly. This was one of those books that you find yourself totally drawn into. It’s weird, it’s unexpected, it’s exquisitely written and Wyman’s narration is flawless.
Chris Pourteau‘s ORP is a brilliant stand-alone that has infinite possibilities for expansion. I lost sleep over this, quite a lot, until I’d finished it. Dark, gritty and appropriately violent when it needs to be, this story throws a sad but intriguing new spin on the main character’s point of view. Following a man with nothing to lose, apart from what remains of his memory, you fall down the rabbit hole only to hit the bottom and want to start all over again.

So there you have it. I was in two minds as to whether I should make recommendations, but if you’re reading this then you probably have an opinion on my ability to comment!

Be safe, be happy, keep reading.

DCF