The Wrath of Kon

Dispatches, thoughts, and miscellanea from writer Jon Konrath

My 2012 writing year in review

Despite all of my bitching about writer’s block, 2012 shaped up to be decent as far as writing output: two books, and twelve publications in eight markets.  My goal this year was to do two books (which was unrealistic, but I did) and average a publication a month (which I now feel was light.)  I also made 105 posts at this blog (albeit half of them being short little things) and a ton of twitter and facebook updates, so those should count for something, too.  But here are the big two, books and stories:

Books

I started the year with The Earworm Inception, which was for the most part written in 2011, and published in the first days of January.  This is probably my favorite of the two books, and it got pretty good reviews:

  • Bibliomantics: “Bizarro often gets a bad rap for being not so grounded in the literary, but Jon Konrath’s collection calls all those beliefs into question with his vivid writing and intriguing story lines.”
  • Voltaire’s reviews: “One reviewer mentioned that Konrath was good at telling these stories with a straight face. That is indeed a great way of saying—it’s so darned serious and then POW. Bloody face. Love it.”

After Earworm, I spent a lot of time working on a successor, and in June, came up with Sleep Has No Master. This book was about 50% longer, and went through far more editing, title changes, cover art changes, and complete reworkings than I’d want to do on a book.  It also got some good reviews:

  • Metal Curse: “The uniquely witty Kon throws off-the-wall, left field, side-splitting references at the reader harder than Pedro Martinez can throw Don Zimmer. I simply couldn’t put this down.”
  • Bibliomantics: “This collection is a mind-fuck of epic proportions.”
  • Voltaire’s reviews: “This collection is basically insane psychotic scripture, laced with prescription drugs, Colonel Sanders, and large quantities of heavy metal. In other words, it is perfect bizarro.”

I also helped publish John Sheppard’s book Alpha Mike Foxtrot in 2012, and took the cover photo for Haiku in the Night by Ben Ditmars, which is good.  But I spent most of the second half of the year festering along on another book that is nowhere near done, and I feel like the next “big book” like Rumored to Exist is still out of reach.  I’m hoping to spend all of 2013 getting that under control.

Stories

Here’s the stories that I published:

That’s more than 2011, but most of those were early in the year, and I haven’t been submitting much lately.  I don’t think I could double that number in 2013, but I wouldn’t mind increasing it a bit, or at least finding some other new or bigger markets.

I think the most important metric to me is that it seems like more people have found my work in the last year.  When I look at some of the reviews, comments from facebook friends, and people reading my tweets, a lot of the names are people completely new to me in 2012.  Some of you old farts have stuck in there too, and I’m grateful for that.  But I’m just as grateful to those of you who have discovered my writing this year, and have come along for the ride.  I don’t do this for money, and I’m certainly not going to become famous writing books about people who crash airplanes into department stores to obtain an erection.  It’s important to me to write exactly what I want to write, and because that isn’t vampire romances or detective murder mysteries, it means I have to look that much harder to find like-minded readers, and it always makes me happy when I do.

So thanks to everyone who has checked out my stuff in 2012.  I hope I can do even more to make 2013 a success.