Every New Year I like to start by looking back at the blog posts that have been most popular in the previous year. It’s always interesting for me, because it usually throws up something unexpected and at least some readers like it because it highlights things that they may have missed. (Links take you to the original post.)
First off, though, a huge thank you to all of you who have made this the best year yet for this blog. It’s lovely to know that so many of you read it and (presumably at least some of you) enjoy it. I’m getting more comments on posts, too, which is always nice. Do please drop a line in the ‘Comments’ box if anything you see has particularly interested, entertained or even annoyed you.
Dark Magic
Like a lot of bloggers, I often suspect that blogging does very little to sell my books. Not many of my posts are straightforward plugs for my work so I was surprised (and very pleased) that the most read of my posts last year was the announcement of my latest book, Dark Magic. Over a thousand of you read that post and some of you even went on to buy the book. Thank you all so much. (http://tomwilliamsauthor.co.uk/exciting-news-well-exciting-for-me-anyway/)
The second most widely read post this year was my review of Jacob Rees-Mogg’s book, The Victorians, which I think by now must have been read by almost as many people as read the book. (It was not a best-seller.) There were a lot of reviews of this book in the newspapers, but most just made fun of it or mocked Rees-Mogg because he wasn’t a real historian. I agree that it’s not a good book, but I think it is a book that deserves to be taken seriously and I have tried to do so. Rees-Mogg and his friends just won a huge election victory. Perhaps it’s time to stop pointing and laughing and start trying to discover what drives them. If you don’t have time to read the book (and I honestly don’t blame you) then it might be worth having a quick look at my review.
I’m always uncertain about putting in stuff that’s just about me. There is no reason at all why anyone should want to see my holiday photographs – yet posts like this are sometimes surprisingly popular (except when they aren’t). My trip to Spain and Portugal near the beginning of the year was ostensibly historical research and I wrote several blogs posts about the Lines of Torres Vedras, which are full of solidly good information for anyone interested in this aspect of the Peninsular War. It was my first post about this trip, though, which attracted the most readers and this is basically just very pretty pictures of some beautiful Spanish towns.
Book reviews
I posted quite a lot of book reviews last year. (I’ll post a list next week if you’re interested.) My blog isn’t really a book blog and reviews can pass by without much notice. The number of readers seems to depend at least in part on how much effort authors who are reviewed poured into spreading the word. So hats off to Rebecca Jenkins, whose book The Duke’s Agent drew most interest of all my 2019 reviews, except Mr Rees-Mogg, who is really a special case. (The review was actually published at the very end of 2018, but I’m letting it sneak in as I doubt it got a lot of readers in December.)
Next up was the first straightforwardly historical blog post. I always think of these posts as being the backbone of the blog, so I’m surprised that we’ve had to wait to #5 (I hope you’re keeping count) for this. Published in June, on the anniversary of the start of the siege, this is a brief summary of the events during the Indian Mutiny that are the background to my book, Cawnpore.
#6 was a guest post by Penny Hampson, writing about how Jane Austen’s ideas of what constitutes a Regency Romance differ quite sharply from what readers expect of a Regency Romance nowadays. It’s an interesting essay by someone who clearly understands the subject. (As she writes Regency Romance herself, that’s probably a good thing.)
Posts about Waterloo are always popular and this year was no exception. On Waterloo weekend I posted a short discussion of why we get so excited about this battle more than 200 years later. And the number of readers showed that we do, indeed, still get excited about it.
Still on the subject of Waterloo, I wrote a piece about Apsley House, the home of the Duke of Wellington. The house was built as a ‘Waterloo Palace’ commemorating and celebrating British victory at the battle. I like to think of the essay as being a piece on the semiotics of architecture, but I’m happy if you just enjoy the pictures.
#9 is another guest post. I do like hosting visiting authors who bring a touch of variety to the blog and, in Karen King’s case, a lot of readers attracted by her account of her writing career. Karen’s approach is nothing if not professional and her account of her career is inspirational.
The Year Ahead
So there we are: another year with a variety of blog posts and me with no idea (until now) which ones were going to be the most successful. I’ll try to keep up the same mix. I have my first guest post of 2020 already lined up and, given how popular travelogues seem to be I’ll maybe post my photos from a trip to York and Leeds. (Leeds now hosts the National Armouries, so look out for lots of pictures of swords. Really. Lots.)
If there is anything you would particularly like me to write about, please mention it in the ‘Comments’ below, or use the ‘Contact‘ form.
Thank you for your company in 2019 and I look forward to the blogging year ahead.
I hope you are all enjoying your Christmas. We had a guest for dinner on Christmas Eve because he comes from a country where Christmas Eve is a bigger thing than for most people in England, so that got the festival off to a good start. Christmas Day was just two of us, but it was a very happy bit interval of peace in a frantic few days, so that was nice. I have been given Jacqueline Reiter’s biography of Lord Chatham to read, so that’s the start of 2020 taken care of. (And chocolate.)
Boxing Day was the by-now-traditional Boxing Day milonga on the South Bank and that was, as ever, a wonderful afternoon of dancing tango with so many friends. Tammy and I felt blessed.
Today and tomorrow my son and his wife will be here with their dog, so that will be a frantic couple of days. I see long walks in the park and far too much eating.
I hope that you are all having a wonderful time (maybe even reading Dark Magic?). It’s not really the time of year for reading (or writing) blog posts, so I’ll leave you to enjoy the holidays. Keep warm, have fun, and, in an increasingly fractious time, count your blessings (and your Christmas presents).
So we’ve finally decorated the tree, got (almost) all the presents bought and now it’s time to settle down to enjoy the final days before Christmas.
I hope you all have better things to do now than read another blog post by me so I’m just sending Christmas greetings and I won’t be posting anything else until the New Year.
If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you’ll know that when I’m not dancing tango I do a lot of street skating. Every year the skaters celebrate Christmas with a skate through town wearing Santa costumes. This year I missed it (I was dancing), but thanks to Patrick Goldyn’s brilliant photography I can bring you a photo from last year for my virtual Christmas card. (I am in there somewhere, honest.)
As far as the dancing goes, on Boxing Day I will, along with hundreds of others, the dancing Tango at the Royal Festival Hall. It’s a free event (with a free lesson for absolute beginners) and lots of fun to join in or just watch (there will be exhibitions). There’s a nice cafe in the Royal Festival Hall, so you can just buy a copy and sit there watching the floor show below. It would be nice if some of you made it stop details are at: http://tangoonthethames.co.uk/?p=283
Anyway, whatever you are doing this Christmas (I hope reading will feature somewhere), I hope you have a fabulous time and I look forward to (virtually) seeing you again in the New Year.
Terry Tyler’s latest, Blackthorn, is another dystopian novel set in the world she initially established in the Renova trilogy, but it stands up perfectly without you reading the others.
Blackthorn
explores a Britain (and probably the rest of the world) that has collapsed and
is being rebuilt with England having a tribal structure. A few small towns
dominate the countryside with villages and other communities gradually falling
to bands of travelling outlaws. Blackthorn is one of the most successful of
these towns.
This isn’t a political book and a political theorist would, I suspect, struggle with the economic basis of Blackthorn. It isn’t quite a feudal system, because it’s not based on ownership of the land, but it does reflect the feudal era in that there is a strict hierarchy within the village with a hereditary leader supported by guards (equivalent to nobles) and then skilled workmen working its way down to people who are essentially serfs. There is a lot of exposition of the nature of the society, which made the book hard for me to get into. It also has an enormous cast with lots of minor characters and I initially found it quite difficult to keep track of everybody.
Fortunately, not that many of Terry Tyler’s readers are likely to be political nerds and once the story really gets going we begin to focus on a more manageable number of characters. The characterisation comes alive in a way which seemed unlikely in the opening chapters. I began to wonder if the characters had taken over from the author, because the plot, too, becomes much livelier. We move away from the details of the village economy, with its peculiar currency of chips and crowns (surely eaten away by inflation in any real-world economy expanding at that rate) and its tightly defined social structure and start getting into something more interesting, centred on the strengths and weaknesses of the people living there.
I had started reading almost with a sense of duty, but, as the plot picked up, I was increasingly drawn into it and by the end I was sitting up late to find out what happened next. This is encouraged by Terry Tyler’s prose style which is, as always, fluid and engaging.
I’m not going to say anything about the plot because it’s
almost impossible to do so without spoilers. At first I
thought it was boring and predictable, but I couldn’t have been more wrong.
That’s all I’ll say and that’s probably too much.
There are a lot of people who will be put off this book, with its dystopian background, its detailed invented society, and its discussion of religion, but they, like me, will probably find that it draws them in if they stay with it.
Alternatively you can buy a book. Remember that you can gift Kindles now (it’s the box on the top right):
For Xmas gifts, though, an actual paper book looks better under the tree. You can still findthe odd bargain. For example, you can buy a Young Adult paperback for a mere £4.27.
Or
Dark Magic is, admittedly, only a novella – though it contains approximately 33,000 more words than a Christmas card and will probably last rather longer than an inflatable crown. Alternatively, you could buy the second in the series about James Burke, Burke and the Bedouin. (The first, Burke in the Land of Silver is, for some reason, more expensive at £5.99.)
If you want to go mad and spend up to £10 there are masses of books available from independent authors. Here are just a few I have read and can recommend.
Why am I just talking about independent (including small press) authors? Because, frankly, they need all the support they can get. Becoming a best-seller (or even a moderately good seller) is seriously difficult even with a major publishing house behind you. As an independent, or with a publisher with a tiny marketing budget, it’s almost impossible. But having a contract with a big publisher is no guarantee of quality and, though there are some truly terrible self-published books out there, there are also some undiscovered gems. Here are a few of my favourite books by authors you have never heard of. Clicking the links will take you to my reviews.
