Well, the Twelve Reads of Christmas is over. Did you like it? I certainly enjoyed myself.
Of course, I had the idea way before Christmas, and the plan was always to read the books and write reviews well in advance, not do what I actually did and virtually read a book a day and write the reviews as I went. My eyes were not happy with me.
But what can you do? “Before Christmas” is not exactly a wasteland of free time, with nothing to do but lie around eating grapes and reading. For one thing “Before Christmas” (hereinafter referred to as BC) includes November, and we all know November is throw-yourself-into-crazy-writing-mode month.
I was supremely happy with my November effort this year. A complete 74,000 word draft! (My God, that deserves more than one exclamation mark – here, have a few more!!!) I’ve been letting it sit untouched since then, but will be going back to revise soon. I hope it’s as good as I remember. (Undoubtedly it will turn out to be made of suck, but hey, that’s what revision’s for.)
And then, once you make it out of the salt mines of November, it’s straight on to the end-of-year madness. Your life disappears in a whirl of assemblies, plays and concerts, while all the time that little panicked voice at the back of your head is bleating about the Christmas shopping and all the Things You Have to DO before BC becomes C and it’s all over for another year (thank God).
But I digress. I was telling you how much I enjoyed writing my reviews. If the pace hadn’t been quite so punishing I would have enjoyed it even more, so I was thinking of starting another series that might go all year, though in a more leisurely fashion.
And what do you know? It’s like magic. There are 52 weeks in the year, and 26 letters in the alphabet. See how perfectly that fits? It’s enough to make you think alien spacefaring monkeys must have started human civilisation at the dawn of time. It can’t be a coincidence!
Be that as it may, the lure of a new project is strong. A review series based on the letters of the alphabet would be fun, don’t you think? One-word titles would be neat. There’s a bit more scope there than titles with numbers in them, so it shouldn’t be too hard (though the latter end of the alphabet may be challenging). It’ll probably mostly be fantasy, since I’ll be looking for books I actually want to read (or reread, in some cases) for each letter.
I’m open to suggestions, though, on some of the trickier letters. Anyone know any good books that have a one-word title starting with Z?
Your biggest challenge will probably be X. And Q may be tricky as well.
I may well have to cheat with X, otherwise I’ll have to read an X-Men comic!