2023: Year in Review

Happy New Year! Ha ha ha. Welcome to 2024 with FictionFans, a podcast where we read books, in other words, too. I'm still Lily.

And I am still Sarah.

And today we're not talking about ANYTHING. Ha ha ha.

We, we are actually talking about things, but we're not talking about one specific book this time.

I guess alternatively we're talking about EVERYTHING.

Yes. And by that we mean it's our 2023 year in review.

Well, before we get into that. Ha ha ha. Sarah, what's something great that happened recently? Gotta stick to tradition.

no, no, no, that's the wrong question. It's what's something great that's happened this year.

All right, all right. What's helping great that happened this year?

My great thing for the year, I think it's going to be my trip to Morocco. It was a good trip.

Yeah, that's awesome. And you went before it all crumbled.

I did go before the big earthquake hit. The earthquake did not affect Marrakesh that much. I mean, yes, it did hit Marrakesh, but the main effects were seen in the mountains and the smaller villages.

That makes sense. Well, I guess my good thing is that I went out of the country for the first time in how many years? I don't even know. Is it boring that both of our things are travel related?

No.

Okay. Well, yeah. I went to Europe. That was nice. Daniel hadn't been before, and so I got to alternate between I know everything and Why are you asking me questions? I have no idea. I'm sure it wasn't frustrating for him at all.

It sounded like a lovely trip, though.

Oh yeah, it was great. Obviously. It was my great thing that happened this year.

Obviously.

What are you drinking tonight? Are we both drinking champagne? Well, I'm drinking Prosecco, technically.

And I'm drinking California sparkling wine, technically. We took too long in starting our recording tonight. My answer was going to be that I was drinking a Cranberry Negroni that I'm testing for a holiday party that I'm hosting. But we spent a good amount of time preparing things for this episode and the podcast in general, and I drank that drink. So, I am now drinking champagne, yes.

I really enjoy the nickname Champers for sparkling wine that isn't technically champagne. Because it's like, yeah, colloquially it's champagne, whatever. But that way you can say, hey, I know it's not real champagne. It's just Champers.

Yes, I am drinking Shampers.

I often use that for like, cooks, or the really cheap stuff.

I'm not drinking Cook's really cheap stuff. The stuff I'm drinking is nice, but,

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The cheaper it gets, then it becomes Champers.

yes,

Doesn't even get the, the soft ch anymore. My hierarchy of whine. Anyway, uh, me too, yes. Have you read anything good lately? Have you read, well, we're going to talk about the year as a whole in a minute here.

Yeah, we are I thought about trying to answer this as, like, a year question, and then I decided, no, we're talking about our reading for the year in this entire podcast. That's what this podcast episode is devoted to. So, I am still reading Tribute by Sherwood Smith, which is a standalone, I think. I don't think it's the first in a series or anything. I think it's one set story set in the same world as her Phoenix Feather Quartet.

And if you want more information on that, go listen to our interview with her.

Indeed.

I don't know the episode number off the top of my head, but it's in there somewhere.

We did talk to her about the first book in the Phoenix Feather series, and you can indeed listen to that interview.

Well, I got a notification today that my e book loan from the King County Library expires in three days, and I didn't even realize that I still had Books of Blood Vol. 5 by Clive Barker borrowed. So that's what I've been reading today. Oh,

any more Clive Barker you had to read.

there's so much! More on that later. Anyway, I got that notification. I was already, like, a third of the way through, so I'll totally be able to finish it before I have to give it back. But I had started it around Thanksgiving, and then, you know, podcast reading happened.

Like it tends to do.

Yeah, and I was good and did the podcast reading instead of reading Books of Blood Volume 5. I had to read them out of order. It doesn't matter, because they're all just collections of short stories. But Volume 6 was available before Volume 5. Anyway. It doesn't matter. That's what I'm reading. Oh shit, I forgot to turn the heater off.

I haven't heard it so far either, so.

You could hear it in the office though,

I could hear it in the office, yeah, I definitely could.

All right, let's try not doing anything about it. This is our experimental episode. I'm recording in a new location. More on that later. Okay. Oh yeah, that is what we're talking about now. Great. Excellent.

That is actually the perfect transition to things that happened in 2023!

I moved to a new loc I mean, not really. I'm just recording in a different room in my house. Bye.

It counts.

Thank you. I think so. It's been a very big change for the last hour that we've been doing this.

I mean, given that every episode up until now has been recorded in the previous location, yeah. That's like three years worth of podcast recording.

Mmm, I mean, some of the early ones were in our apartment before we hit the house.

Okay, details, details. But, my statement generally still stands.

Yes, it does. But when we switched to our new recording software, which is another new thing that happened, I noticed that my noises were driving me insane. And I'm the one who has to edit these, so I had to do something about it. I don't know if this is any better. We'll find out.

I mean, yeah, I think you'll discover that as you are recording this episode. So, keep us posted. Record, like, a little blurb as you are editing to tell

Yeah, I will, I will. Well, it's pretty bad. I guess that tells us that. I will say I like the new recording software we're using. I guess we probably still will keep using Zoom for guests just because it's easier. But SquadCast, which we're using now, records locally, so if someone's internet connection gets bad, it doesn't ruin all of the audio, which is really nice.

And we have had that problem before. I do like using Squadcast. I like that we have access to Descript, which is a transcript service that's better than the transcript service we were previously using. I do think we will probably keep using Zoom for most guest interviews just because it's a lot easier. But, yeah, I'm glad we switched to Squadcast.

Yeah, and I do think the recording quality is higher, which has downsides, like I could hear all of my mouth noises all of a sudden. I think I cut most of those out in editing, but oh boy, was that new. And then, Descript, obviously, was the big one, that's why we switched in the first place.

Yes, on that note, we have transcripts on our blog for, I'm not going to say all of our episodes because we haven't actually put them all on the blog yet, but for most of our episodes, no, I can't even say most because there's still a lot of episodes that we don't have, don't have transcripts. For some of our episodes, we have transcripts.

Our recent and ongoing episodes.

Yes, recent and ongoing episodes all have transcripts up on the blog. We have transcripts for all of our episodes. Some of our old transcripts are done by our old provider, which was otter. ai, and the transcripts are not nearly as good as those produced by Descript, but we're not re transcripting things.

And who knows, by the time this episode is out, maybe I will have chugged through our backlog while I'm forced to watch football in a trap of my own making.

It's possible

I have to stop complaining about something I did to myself on accident.

you did do it to yourself. I have a limited amount of sympathy there.

Yeah. Anyway. Transcripts. Descript. All of these new things. It was a shaky start. Descript claims that it's an editor as well. It's not. Maybe if you're doing a short video.

That also brings us a little bit to next year's goals. We're not going to talk about that yet. That's going to come later in the podcast, but Descript does a lot of cool uploading for us, including maybe YouTube in the future. More on that at nine.

Well, we did have one other very exciting announcement this year, which I don't think we've talked about on the podcast, actually, yet.

Yeah, I don't actually think we've talked about this on the podcast at all.

We've had so many guests lately that it would be weird to say, shut up about your stupid book, we want to talk about our lit mag.

Yeah, it, it has not, we've had a lot of blog posts about it, and by that I mean too.

That's a lot for us, okay.

It is. But we've not had a great time to talk about it on the podcast. So here we are, talking about it on the podcast. We are producing a litmag slash fanzine called Solstitia.

Which we do pronounce differently, and I love that. Don't ever change, Sarah. I want both of us to pronounce solstitia completely different, just because I think that's our, that's our vibe. That's on brand.

It is on brand. I think actually you pronounce it correctly. Or closer to correctly than I do.

If we were being really, well, accurate to my Latin classes, it would be stultitia. And while that is very funny, uh, I can't stop myself from giggling every time I say it, which is not the vibe we're going for.

My Latin class was taught in French, and all of my Latin thus has a French accent, so I don't even attempt it. But, yes, anyway, solstitia, solstitia, however you decide to pronounce it, if it's a third pronunciation, please do let us know so we can add it to our rotation.

Or go in on the titty. Sultitia.

Yeah, just commit to the bit. We appreciate that too. Or should I say commit to the tit, because I think that's more accurate.

That is pretty good, yeah.

But we do have this fanzine that we are producing, and I believe that we are opening submissions for our first issue in February, so we're very excited.

We have a page up on Duotropes. It's very cool. I just go look at it sometimes. I sent it to all of my friends and was like, Look! Look, it's up!

We also have a page on our website that talks more about what it is, what our submission guidelines are, when we are planning on putting out our first issue. Spoiler alert, that's June. So all of the relevant information is up on our website if you are interested in Potentially submitting something for it.

No submission fees. That's very important to us. And, I mean, also on the website, like you just said, but go look at the information because there's no fees.

There's, there's no fees, there's also So, we're funding this ourselves, we're not doing any kind of crowdfunding. This is just us, so we're not paying the big bucks. I'm sorry, I wish we could, but we are two working women, we don't make that much money. And we're hoping to have more than one submission. So there is, there is a token amount that we will pay for accepted submissions.

And if you subscribe to our Patreon, you will get the issue for free. Or I guess not for free, as part of the Patreon. And if you don't subscribe, it will be available for 2. 99, I think we landed on.

I, that sounds about right, yeah.

It might change. It won't go up, though.

Some small amount of money not exceeding 2.

Yes. That's a couple months away for that actual, you know, buying the zine part, but we're starting to work on it and it's very fun. Oh, this is the longest I've ever gone in my life NOT working on a zine.

Yeah, because you, you have all of that experience from university, don't you?

Yeah, anyway, I'm hyped. We're hyped. It's gonna be great. Let's talk about 2023.

Yeah, so, 2023, my favorite bit about this year in review, or one of my favorite bits about this year in review episode, is pulling together our stats for the past year, and seeing how our reading has compared to the previous year. Things we have done great, things we could do better. So I'll start out by saying, In 2023, we did release 48 episodes versus 2022, we released 51 episodes. So we slowed down a little bit, but not noticeably.

Did I go to Europe and then ignore everything? Maybe.

That maybe had a little bit of an effect on our release schedule, but only by like one episode, because I'm pretty sure most of that we're making up.

Does that stat count for the episode that comes out in our time next week, but in podcast time two weeks ago?

Yes.

Okay.

So that stat counts for the episodes that, as we are recording right now, we have not actually technically released.

Sarah, how can we do a year in review if we haven't actually finished the year?

Well, we have actually recorded all of our episodes, so

I agree. I think that counts. I just had to say it. I had to make you say it.

But yes, that does encompass all of the episodes that were released in 2023, even though technically from our point of view as we are recording, that includes episodes that have not been released yet.

Don't you love time?

Time! Wibbly wobbly timey wimey. Yes.

It looks like we had the exact same number of non book episodes in the two years.

I think we did.

It's a very backwards way of getting at your next metric, but I'm sticking to it.

Yes. So, we read 45 books for the podcast this year versus 48 books last year. I don't remember one of our non book. Episodes last year would have been the year in review. I don't remember what the other two were.

Yeah, and when we say non book, we mean it wasn't book specific, so the episode was still, like, vaguely literature related.

Yes, but it, we,

Heh

theory, but we were not reading a specific book for the episode, is what I mean. So,

Oh, we had the fanfiction episode.

we did have the fanfiction episode, so that would have been two. In 2022, there would have been the year in review, the fanfiction episode, and one other episode.

We have a spreadsheet.

We do, but I didn't look up what non book specific episodes we had last year. This year, I could tell you that our three non book specific episodes were, again, our Year in Review, which is the first episode of the year. We talked about manga with Nick Martell, and we had our Whiskey in Publishing episode, which was basically an excuse to drink whiskey, with Peter McLean and Nicholas Eames.

I looked it up. Our third non book episode last year was Monsterfucking with Danny Finn, which was a hell of a fun time recording.

Oh, that was a good episode.

any of you haven't listened to that yet, you should go and do that.

That was a good episode. Danny Finn is always a wonderful person to have on the podcast.

Anyway, I'm sorry. That was a walk down memory lane that does not actually help us talk about this year at all.

Yes, but continuing on with our genre exploration this year, so we read 31 fantasy books versus 27 last year. This includes subgenres like urban fantasy. I think this year it was mostly straight fantasy rather than any subgenres, or at least less so than last year. We had Eight sci fi books versus fourteen last year.

Oof.

Yeah,

Big oof. Sorry, science fiction.

we'll, we'll talk about that maybe in our, in our goals. We also had what I classify as six other, so that means genres that don't fit in those categories. Because we don't have enough for them to be their own genre. So, this year we had four horror, one cozy crime, and one non fiction. Last year we had five other books, two thriller, two mystery, and one humor.

Basically, spooky month is fucking up your stats.

Spooky month fucks up the stats, yeah, but also, all of these stats come from a spreadsheet that I maintain, so it's all kind of arbitrary anyway, I mean,

All genre is arbitrary. These are our definitions and those are the ones that matter to us.

If it's our podcast, we'll do what we like with it, but we definitely fell down on the The sci fi. I will take the blame for that because I gravitate to fantasy more than I gravitate to sci fi, and I'm usually the one making book decisions for the podcast.

I also love sci fi but tend to be very picky about it. And so I think when there's a book that we're debating putting on, I'm not going to take a risk because you're less likely to enjoy it overall.

I like sci fi!

Yeah, you don't gravitate towards it. It doesn't click quite the same way. Whatever, however you want to say it.

When I say that I don't gravitate towards sci fi, what I mean is that if I have to choose between a sci fi book and a fantasy book without knowing anything else about them, I'm gonna go fantasy. But that doesn't mean that I'm not gonna enjoy the sci fi book.

I, I don't think you can use that argument. Like, picking one over the other means you favor it. That's just, that's how that works.

Right, but that doesn't mean that I dislike sci fi in any way or that it's not gonna click.

Okay, let me try again. I think you and I tend to have more common ground as readers over fantasy.

Okay, that I will not argue with.

And so, when we're deciding what books to read together, it tends to be the easier decision.

Yeah, that's fair.

But we shouldn't always pick easy books. I will say some of our fav well, some of my favorites, and you've agreed that they were good, I won't say that they're your favorites, have been books that we weren't totally sure about but put on the schedule as a fuck it choice and ended up being really good. So maybe we should take more chances, I don't know. We've talked about this off air, on how to figure out how to make risky choices without making a terrible podcast episode.

We'll see, yeah. Anyway, we do have room for improvement in covering sci fi. I mean, I'm not saying that we should do a 50 50 split, but like, we could do a couple more sci fi books if we're covering 31 fantasy books. Anyway, we'll figure it out. In terms of Discworld, this year we read 9 Discworld books versus 9 last year, so that was completely the same.

Well, really, our calendar is built around our journey to the center of the Discworld. Which I have been failing on announcing, I apologize to everyone. Talk about 2024 goals. Anyway, we really do build our calendar around this is when we're reading each Discworld book and then what's going in between. Just, mostly because we don't want to read a bunch of Discworld in a row. Like, we love it, but we know it's not for everyone. And like, we're not actually a Discworld podcast.

Yeah, so we do like to have non Discworld books in between, and I think the last couple of years, well, the last two years, some of our Discworld books have had more of a gap in between, like, Discworld book and Discworld book, because There have been, frankly, other books that we were really excited to cover. So I think that next year, not that that's going to be less of the case, but the way that our schedule is has the very final Discworld book come out for our very final episode of the year.

Yeah, and one a month isn't terrible. Speaking from the perspective of someone who doesn't enjoy Discworld, obviously one a month isn't terrible for me.

Yeah. Yeah, but I think one a month is a pretty good momentum.

That's a decent mix, and I agree. That scheduling is important.

Yes. And when we first started the podcast and first started projecting our episodes, that's not where that final Discworld novel was gonna fall. As we have updated our schedule, that's where it's been pushed out to, and I refuse to let it be pushed out anymore just because it's too perfect.

Or we wait twelve months to release the last episode.

Or we wait 12 months to release the last episode, but I'm not sure I want to do that either, so.

No, that would be terrible. Don't do that.

So, moving on from Discworld versus non Discworld, the target age of the books that we've read, we don't have comparisons for 2022 because this is not a stat that we actually recorded last year, but we have read 38, and again, all of these designations are a little bit arbitrary because I'm the one who's making them and I'm not consulting Goodreads, it's like, it's from a spreadsheet that I populate manually. whatever.

Is this only counting episodes that we published?

Yes, it's only, it's, so it's not counting any of our Nostalgia Book Club episodes on, on Wednesdays We Read that were published on their podcast feed.

Okay, I was curious.

Yeah, it is, it is specifically episodes that we have published.

Yeah, I mean, that seems like a decent mix, considering we're adults.

Yes.

But it doesn't hurt to indulge your inner child every once in a while.

Yeah, um, I mean, some of our YA books have been fun. I've really loved, like, talking with Gabriella Houston, for example. We've read her middle grade novel, Not the Storm Child, because I think that was last year, but the sequel to The Storm Child. Either way, we have read some great middle grade books. So, yeah, there's nothing wrong with switching things up occasionally.

We've gotta post some of these as infographics because, well, listening to numbers, like, my brain just can't catch it. If I was not looking at our planning document right now, I don't think I'd be processing anything you were saying.

I do want to post this information as a blog post. If you want to make me fancy infographics, then yes please.

I mean, I'm using the phrase infographics, I'm just gonna make a pie chart in Excel.

If you want to do that, yes please.

My job is vaguely related with data analysis. I don't make pretty infographics, I make charts, bitches.

But I agree, hearing a storm of numbers can sometimes be a little overwhelming.

Let's throw some more at our listeners.

Yes, so this time we're going to talk about author demographics. Again, with the caveat, this is I'm not going to say arbitrary by me, but it is based on what I can Google. So, it's quite possible I have gotten things wrong or missed things. This is just a very broad, basic overview.

There is one author, I'm not gonna name names, that no matter how much we research, we cannot find their preferred pronouns. And I am so terrified that we have fucked it up. And we've looked pretty hard.

We have. And they're counted in one demographic, and we might have gotten it wrong. But Yes, we acknowledge that there are things we might have gotten wrong about this. We did our best, we're only human, and we did only a very I did only a very cursory googling, so.

I feel like it's pretty safe to say if it's in your, like, About page on your website or in your Twitter or BlueSky bio, we found it. If it's harder to find than that, no guarantees.

Yes, I think that is accurate. With that said, of all of the 45 books that we read this year, 8 we consider debut novels. We don't have information for that in 2022, we didn't track that. This year, we read 34 unique authors versus 38. There are some duplicates, of course, like we have Terry Pratchett, who we read a lot of each year. There are some other authors who we read multiple times this year.

We finished Lord of the Rings this year. Did we do Lord? We did Lord of the Rings this year, so I think Tolkien is going to account for a lot of that.

You're skipping ahead. Tolkien is the author that we read the most this year, not counting Pratchett. He gets disqualified for that category. But yes, in this unique authors, Tolkien is only counted once.

Well, the reason why there's fewer Unigothers this year, though, is because we read several Tolkien books,

Yes, and we had a couple of other authors who we read multiple times, but that's the case for last year too. So, we read 18 female authors this year, versus 19 last year. 14 male authors. Versus 18 last year, and one non binary author versus three last year. We also had one book that was a collaboration between multiple authors.

Well, that's also one he pronoun, one she pronoun, right? So they cancel each other out anyway.

Yeah, so, I mean, you could say that we read 19 female authors and 15 male authors, sure, but I thought it was worth calling out just because I wasn't sure how to count them. We read 6 BIPOC authors versus 10 last year, we got a little bit of room for improvement there. 6 queer authors versus 3 queer authors last year, still room for improvement, but we are, in this case, doing better than last year.

We're improving. We're on the right trajectory there.

Yes.

I, interestingly, there's probably a whole fucking essay here. I do feel like Spooky Month ends up being a place where we find interesting books by authors of color and or queer authors. And that there's something there about the horror genre and people trying to deal with the reality of this universe. That's not the right way to phrase it. You know what I'm saying, though.

So, I do know what you're saying, and I don't disagree, but I also think that part of it is that with Spooky Month, in particular, because I am not familiar with authors in that genre, we go looking for authors. It's more than we do for the rest of the year, and so we are more focused on finding authors who do not necessarily fit the stereotypical mold, whereas we

definitely an aspect of that that's true.

Yeah, I mean, I don't think that's all of it, like I do think that you have a point about there being a lot of underrepresented authors in horror who are doing very interesting things. But I think that's a portion of the story and our looking for authors is also a portion of the story, if that makes sense.

Yeah. No, it does. It does. You're right. I'm just excited to make you read Clive Barker next year.

We will be reading Clive Barker next year.

Alright, how do we do on the indie front?

Yes, so in terms of publisher, 26 of our books that we read for this year were published by the big five publishers versus 28 last year. 10 were self pub versus 9 last year, and 9 were indie or small press. versus 13 last year. And publication date, so for this year 19 of the books that we read were published in the last two years versus last year 23 of them were published in the last two years. And we read 26 backlist books this year versus 25 backlist books last year.

I mean, that's always the eternal dilemma, right? New books come out every year.

Yeah, I mean that is the eternal dilemma. There are books coming out. coming out all the time, and I, I want to read all of them for the podcast, and we can't read all of them for the podcast, and if we are reading a book that came out this year, it means that there's another book that came out earlier that we aren't reading, and like, at the very most, we're only ever going to have 52 episodes come out a year.

And then even, like, I just have some big gaps in my reading repertoire. Also not the right word. My friend lent me Don Quixote, that's at the top of my TBR, for this winter break, if you will. And it's absurd that I haven't read that book yet.

I mean, I haven't read it either. But that also brings up the point that like nine of the books that we read this year and nine of the books that we read last year were Terry Pratchett and those are rereads and nine rereads means that's nine new books we aren't reading.

Rereading is so hard. But also the best. It's, ugh, life is difficult.

We just need more time,

Yeah.

if only.

All right, who'd we read this year?

So, authors we read the most, not counting Pratchett, because as we've said, he's just discounted, you know, as a matter of course. We read three Tolkien books, the three Lord of the Rings books. We read two Tamsin Muir books, Harrow the Ninth and Nona the Ninth. And next year we will hopefully read the new book that's coming out at some point. I don't know if there's a release date or not, and I forget the title, but hopefully there will be a new book.

It'll be something the 9th.

Something the 9th, yes. And then we also read two books by K. R. R. Lockhaven. There was The Foundling, the Heist, and the Volcano, which is book two in his trilogy. And then there was Mrs. Covington's, which is a book set in the same world, but not entirely related to the trilogy.

I would say it's a standalone.

It's a standalone, but it is somewhat related to the trilogy.

Yeah, but you don't need the trilogy as background information.

this is, this is very true. So, those were the authors that we read the most, in terms of guest appearances. We actually didn't have a lot of repeat guest appearances this year. We had Hannah and Laura from on Wednesday's We Read podcast on twice, and they were the only repeats.

We did have some other collaborations though. I mean, recently we had Adrian Gibson on from SFF Addicts to talk about Frankenstein. And did we do Soul Survivor this year? No, that was last year.

last year.

Damn, we've been recluses.

We had some lovely guests this year. We did do some great collaborations, but in terms of repeat guests, yeah, I was kind of astonished when I was looking at our guest list and realized that the only people we had had on multiple times this year was Hannah and Laura.

This is also only guests we've had on FictionFan's pod. We have been guests on other podcasts. Although probably still not a lot of repeats there.

Still not a lot of repeats there, unless you count the Podcast that I also occasionally co host, but

Well, then you're not a guest, are

yeah, I'm not a guest, so I don't think that counts.

And which podcast is that?

That is Tarvalon Talks. It is a Wheel of Time specific podcast.

I'm baffled why you are invited and not me. Heh heh heh heh heh. The logic is just so hard to understand. Heh heh

Gee, I'm surprised. Why would I be on that and not you?

Who wouldn't want me to come talk about Wheel of Time? That wouldn't devolve immediately at all. Do

know, first you can join tarvalon. net, which is the Wheel of Time fan site that is hosting this podcast.

I have to read Wheel of Time? Is that a requirement?

No, to join tarvelon. net, you don't actually have to read Wheel of Time, but to be on the podcast, maybe.

anyway. No, we're done there. I can keep giving you a hard time, but I'm gonna start repeating myself, because I don't actually know anything about Wheel of Time, so my tricks have been spent.

Yeah, I don't know if that really counts as giving me a hard time.

I know there's orcs, but they don't call them orcs. Mm hmm. I watched the first episode. Anyway, we have moved on to my favorite part of our year in review, which is superlatives! We have some awards to hand out to the books we read this year. They're very important. I'm sure everyone's on the edge of their seat.

Very important, yes.

We should email everyone a little gold star. Hehehehe.

you can get your husband to make award graphics for us, yes.

Hell yeah. Okay. That's a project for me, uh, to work on. Anyway, the first award, of course, has to be Best Trash Villain. And this one's kind of a no brainer.

I think yes. This one's kind of a no brainer. We read Shadow and Bone, the first Shadow and Bone book for the podcast this year, apparently. I remember the discussion, I didn't remember it was this year, but we did read it. And the Darkling is the OG trash villain. Obviously, he was gonna, he was gonna win this award.

Well, there's also an interesting conversation because we did read more of Esa Hansen's Graven trilogy. Is that what it's called?

That is what it's called. Yeah, her, her raven trilogy. And as much as I argue that Thray is a trash villain in the first book, I think he gets less trash villain like as the series progresses.

Yeah, the two books we read this year. He's firmly an antihero, and so he is disqualified for this award.

only read one book this year. We read the first two books last year.

shit, okay, I'm still right.

But your statement stands! I mean, you're still right. He goes from trash villain to anti hero, and so he's firmly disqualified.

Well, if we only read one book this year, then yeah, there's not even a gray area for sure. I agree with you!

For once, we agree. Okay, so, next award, Best Supporting Character.

Well, we read Lord of the Rings this year, so again, unfair. This competition was rigged. Samwise

Hard to not give Sam all of the awards for Best Supporting Character.

Gamgee. That's it. That's all there is to say.

Yeah. Although, go for it.

we do also have to bring up Ashley from Exit Ghost by Jennifer Donahue, because Ashley might be the modern witchy girl Samwise Gamgee. If Exit Ghost is modern witchy girl Hamlet. Then Ashley is Modern Witchy Girl Samwise KMG.

I am going to email Jen and tell her that we have a new blurb for her for Exit Ghost.

She'll be thrilled.

She will be. I actually genuinely think she will be.

Our next category is Best Hero, and my nominee for this is Nona the Ninth from Nona the Ninth by Tamsin Muir.

This one was hard. Unexpectedly hard.

Yeah. So, okay. I don't think Nona I mean, she's the protagonist, which doesn't necessarily make her a hero. And through most of the book, she is not, I would say, super heroic in traditional terms. But in, spoiler, spoiler, spoiler, at the end,

ha ha.

she does pull some shit off. And I love her attitude while doing it. And that is why she is our hero. Save the dog!

Yeah, I mean, I think Nona was great, and, like, I don't have a better answer, so I think Nona is, Nona's it.

And, again, specifically, this is Hero, not Protagonist.

Yes, this is specifically Hero.

She struggles, she overcomes, she saves the day. That's a Hero.

Yeah, it is. It's very true.

also found her very charming and liked her quite a bit. So, Nona, the ninth question mark? Uh,

book by a new to us author, and I would say that was Ithaca by Claire North. No question. I absolutely loved Ithaca. I really, really want us to read more of this series on the podcast. I realize I'm in charge of the schedule, so I should just schedule it. But.

did the second book already come out?

Oh, the second book's been out for like six months.

Oh, great. Clearly I am involved. Yeah, we should read more. I agree. I loved Ithaca. And Claire was amazing to talk to. Such a cool lady. So many interesting conversations. She's great. Ithaca was great.

Yeah, Claire was fantastic to have on the podcast. Ithaca was a, an incredible book. I'm really, really excited to read House of Odysseus, I think is book two, the title of book two. And I think book three is coming out this year. So yeah, best new to us author, definitely Claire North.

Now, to be fair, we're both antiquity bitches. So.

It's true.

This was a, this was a gimme. Okay, so as far as a best book by a not new to us author, I gotta throw in Hell's Eight. I love that world so much. Stark Holborn has created such an amazing universe. I love all of these characters. I love the plot. I love the tension.

Hell's Eight was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed it. I believe that Stark Holborn is working on a book three, which I'm very excited about. And I also think that Stark has been working on a cyberpunk, essentially sim like video game, which sounds like a lot of fun.

Holy shit.

And I think that's on Steam.

You need to confirm this right the fuck now. Cause that's what I'm doing immediately after this. I'm so excited. We have to wrap this up.

I mean, like, it looks great, honestly. Like, it looks like a really fun game. Please start playing it, so that I can hear about it from you.

Okay, we only have like ten more of these. We have to run through them really fast. We have so many more.

Have you found this game on Steam?

Yes, immediately.

Okay.

We're good. We're locked in.

Okay, so, barreling through our next couple of stuff, best debut if we read a debut novel, which we read a couple of this year.

I mean, winning by a technicality. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.

It's a technicality, but I think we can say it counts.

It feels unfair. Have I said that about all of our awards?

You've said it about more than one. I do think calling Frankenstein the best debut is a little unfair, but also it's not wrong.

It's not wrong. We've read a lot of great debuts, but I'm sorry, Frankenstein's a cornerstone of a genre.

Yeah, and it was a debut novel, so. Maybe it's the question that's unfair and not the responses.

Maybe. All right, Sarah, what was your best reread?

I mean, I gotta say, we read A Stranger to Command for an interview with Sherwood Smith. I love all of her Star Toreous Dallas books, particularly A Stranger to Command because I love A Crown Duel and this is the prequel to it. So I'm gonna say A Stranger to Command.

Well, I hadn't read it before, so it doesn't count for this category for me.

Yep.

It's gotta be Return of the King.

That's very fair.

It's gotta.

Yeah.

I'm sorry. I'm not sorry. Okay, best book we read that was not for the podcast. Three guesses what mine's gonna be.

it's not gonna rhyme with Rive Larker, is

It might.

heh. I think mine, so as much as I've talked about enjoying the Sarah J Maas books, which is what I've read most recently, I think the best books that I've read not for the podcast should probably be The Lavington Windsor Mysteries by Alice James, which is basically Sookie Stackhouse but British. And they were just a lot of fun. I read them in July. And they were just, they were just great. Like, they were just so much fun.

Well, I do love Sookie Stackhouse and I do love tea, so it sounds like that would be a good idea to read.

If we have space on the schedule next year, we'll see. But I would definitely love to read at least one of them for the podcast.

That sounds like a good time. It does suck that we're already starting to push 2025, huh? Alright, my favorite book that we read for the podcast I think is gonna be The Delve by Danny Finn. It had adventure, it had romance. Romance doesn't even feel like the right word, but erotica feels too cheap. This was a book for me.

Dani Finn writes lovely books. I did really enjoy The Delve. There's a lot of books of theirs that we have not read yet, but I'm excited to. So.

Hell yeah.

Book setting we'd most want to live in?

It's gotta be Mrs. Covington's. So, in previous years, last year, in previous years, I think I said that K. R. R. Lockhaven's universe was cut from this category for me because it does sort of mirror some bullshit politics in a very good way in the book. But in a way that makes me not want to live in the world. And Mrs. Covington's does take place in the same universe, but sort of in, like, a little pocket dimension? Not really. But it's less plugged into the world politics, so I can ignore it.

Mrs. Covington's is definitely cozy fantasy in the way that the other books in that universe are not, I would say.

Exactly. So even though it's the same universe, it's bringing that world in for me, for a where I would want to live. Now nachos have been invented there, so I could eat. Because that's actually the only thing I consume. I don't know if you knew this.

I mean, we are cousins. I do know you. I do know that you don't eat anything other than nachos.

It's true. You got breakfast nachos. You got dinner nachos. It's a subtle difference, but it's there. What about you? Where would you want to live?

I think you're right. I think that Mrs. Covington's is cozy in a way that a lot of the books that we read weren't. Like, it's such a wonderful setting. And there's a lot that's there to explore, even though it's not specifically in Mrs. Covington's. So yeah, I think I would agree with you.

You got nachos and you got magic. What more do you need?

Exactly!

Okay, what book setting would we most quickly die in?

Before the Shattered Gates of Heaven. By Brian Glossmeyer. Yeah.

Yeah, hands down, I would not survive there at all.

Yeah, we would, we would be dead. We would just be dead.

That is an intense sci fi book. I love it so much. The characters are There's a lot going on. I wouldn't thrive in that setting.

It was a great book. I don't want to live there. Okay.

category. Ithaca by Claire North. Ancient Greece? They would burn me at the stake as a witch. Like, immediately.

I also think it would be hard to live there. I agree. I think it would be a little easier to live there than the world of Before the Shattered Gates of Heaven.

Yes. Yes. But I would say it's second.

I agree with that. How

Okay, so the book that surprised me the most was definitely Exit Ghost by Jennifer Donahue. It sells itself. She sells it. The book sells itself as Witchy Girl Hamlet, and it totally is. But the narrative plays with Hamlet, and therefore our expectations, in such a way that I never really could be sure which plot point was going to follow Shakespeare's story, and which plot point was going to deviate. And something about that, like, push and pull had me on the edge of my seat the whole time.

Yeah, I think that's fair. For me, I think the book that surprised me the most would probably be Skin Thief by Susan Palumbo Because I really enjoyed it And uh

End of sentence.

End of sentence. It's, it's just being a horror, you know, genre, collection of short stories, I wasn't expecting to like it as much as I did.

Yeah, it was definitely, I mean, it was horror, but it wasn't like, capital H horror, if you

No. It was not.

The book we'd most like to see turned into a TV show.

Before the Shattered Gates of Heaven by Brian S. Glosemeyer.

Yeah, I mean, that would be awesome. Holy shit. It's such a visual world. There's great slang, which I think works really well in adaptations.

Yeah, I think that there's a lot to that story that would lend itself well to a visual medium. Not just the fact that there's the sci fi setting that obviously, like, would be cool to see on screen, but I think that it would make for a really good TV show.

What was your favorite podcast episode to record this year? Every single one, because we got to hang out.

Sure, we'll say that. Uh, no, but I think favorite podcast episode to record is gonna have to be A Life With Footnotes with Rob Wilkins because Rob fucking Wilkins was on our podcast.

Yeah, that was amazing.

That was pretty cool. I'm not gonna lie, that was pretty cool.

What do you think was the coolest magic system?

I really like The Magic and the Bruising of Kilwa by Nassim Jamnia.

That was neat. I'm gonna throw The Delve by Danny Finn back in on this one. I really liked the way that A, different cultures used magic, and B, how magic interacted with technology.

Danny Finn does do a lot of really interesting things with magic in their worlds, it's true.

Well, then coolest tech on the flip side of that.

Coolest Tech, I've got to say, debunked by Dito Abbott. Which was not a book that we loved wholeheartedly. You know, I mean, we, it was not necessarily the book for us. But I think Dito Abbott does a lot of really, really, really interesting things with the tech in that series. And Like, all of the, you know, drogue and, er, drog and

I was gonna say, you got a robot guard dog, I'm in.

Yeah, exactly!

Whatever else is going on.

So, so there's a lot of really cool tech going on. So even, even if the book wasn't necessarily for us, the tech is just really cool.

Absolutely. Speaking of books that didn't click perfectly, for best relationship, I think I'm gonna say Camp Damascus by Chuck Tingle. It was not my favorite book that we read this year. Again, partially, I think, a little bit of read or mismatch. I probably should have read the summary before I read the book, whatever. But the relationship between the main character and her love interest is, well, A, very sweet and supportive.

I think my favorite relationship is probably found in Foundling the Heist and the Volcano by K. R. R. Lockhaven because I love how supportive the relationship is between the main character and her love interest and how they work together. There's none of this Like, there's conflict in the book, and there's conflict between the two of them, but it's never relationship conflict, you know?

That was a really good one.

Best book cover?

mean, it's gotta be The Cleaving. Cover by Chris Panettiere.

The Cleaving is a really good cover, it's true. I really liked The Hero Interviews.

This is terrible for an audio format. Why are we doing this to ourselves?

That's a good question!

Final question. New category for this year that I added, just for fun. Which book we argued over the most?

Uh, which book did we argue over the most? That's probably going to be Ethera Grave by Essa Hansen. We argued over that book a lot.

Yeah.

It was a lot.

The year before, did we do Gideon the Ninth? What year was that?

Yeah, that would have been last year, I

That would have been the winner. We probably argued over Gideon more than we argued over Etherograve, but

Do you think so?

I don't know. They were both a lot over different things.

I kind of think that we argued over Etheria Grave more.

I think I left more of the arguing in the episode of Gideon. I think I cut a lot of it.

Okay, that's fair. Have you actually edited the Etheria Grave episode yet?

I'm like halfway through.

Okay.

Actually, that's true! It has, well, it will have come out. So it does count. Because it will have come out before this episode

Yes. Yes, it will have.

And that was 2023. Good year, find vintage.

I never thought we would get to 2023 in the podcast. To be perfectly honest, I didn't think we would get past like six months in 2021.

Do you remember when we said we wouldn't buy a web domain until we had done 10 episodes to make sure we'd actually stick with it? And then one week later, we were like, fuck this. We want our web domain.

we did, we did not stick with that, uh, with that description.

But it panned out.

It did.

We made it past 10 episodes. We had our 100th episode this year. Like, holy shit. So what is going on in 2024 besides the debut issue of Solstitia?

So, things that I'm looking forward to in 2024. Our good friend Adrian M. Gibson of SFF Addicts is releasing his debut novel Mushroom Blues in March, I believe, and I'm really excited. He will be coming on to the podcast to talk about it with us. His cover, we will be doing a cover reveal for him on the 17th. His cover looks fantastic. He's just got a really, really gorgeous cover. Fantastic artist. So, you'll see that soon. And the book itself is sure to be great.

I'm so excited for that book. It's, what did he call it? Funguspunk?

Yes, I think so.

Something like that. I love mushrooms and I love cyberpunk.

It's a good combination.

Chris Panettiere is also writing a book that takes place in an asylum. The name of it escapes me. The something of someone. That's helpful. The

The Haunting of Morgan Bright? Is that it?

Redemption of Morgan Bright.

Redemption of Morgan Bright, yes, that comes out in April. He will also be on the podcast. That's also going to be a great episode because Chris is fantastic, his books are fantastic. I'm going to die as we read this because I'm not a horror fan.

yeah!

A horror novel! I love you, Chris. This is, this is a, a marker of my love.

You know who else you love? Me! And that's why you're gonna read Clive Barker for Spooky Month next year. That's the other thing I'm excited about.

I am gonna read Clive Barker for Spooky Month next year. It's very true.

Oh, you're gonna hate it, but I don't care.

I don't know if I'll hate it, but it's not gonna be, uh, for me. Maybe.

Yeah.

But I'm gonna, I'm gonna do it. It's gonna be great. We'll have lots of Clive Barker. We'll have one episode of Clive Barker. The other person we're gonna have episodes of that I'm really excited for is Prima Mohammed. We covered one of her books on the podcast a couple of years ago, The Appletree Throne, but she's gonna come on to the podcast in March to talk about two books that she has coming out and I'm really excited to have her on the podcast. That's gonna be great.

Me too, I can't wait to talk to her. We read The Appletree Throne and I loved it. I can't wait to see what this other book is all about.

because it's two things that we're reading.

Well, the amount of things that I read. Clearly I pay a lot of attention to our calendar.

Yeah, there's, there's two things we're reading for her, for her episode.

Alright. Hey, you know what else we're reading multiple of next year?

Discworld!

That was a bad segue, but I'm sticking with it. Yeah!

Discworld, we're finishing Discworld!

Talk about things we never thought would happen when we actually started.

It's true. Yeah, I didn't think we would get this far.

No. We're in it now though. Okay, but what are our goals? We talked about our new transcription software. It also has a capability to publish to YouTube. So, my personal goal is going to be to start creating like waveform subtitled videos for YouTube. I know, well, obviously Captions or subtitles are really important for accessibility, but also, a lot of people just use YouTube to listen to podcasts. We're still not gonna post video, because I want to slouch and be a monster.

Yeah, I think, I think that would be great. Something that I would really love to see is, and I know that I am like 99 percent in charge of our calendar. I say 99 percent because obviously you have veto power, etc, etc. But I would love to see more BIPOC authors. We have to be better at this. As we mentioned earlier, we had Six BIPOC authors this year, out of 34, that's not a great metric. We need to be better at that. So, I would like to be better at that next year.

That's not true.

we have talked about you wanting to have more sci fi on the podcast.

I think it's important. I mostly don't want us to be pigeonholed. Like, the world has enough fantasy podcasts. And I know that's the opposite of marketing. We should find a niche, but no, fuck that. I want to read everything.

Okay, I would like us to do more sci fi because you have expressed an interest in doing more sci fi there.

sci fi, I also think, yeah, just like, genre diversity. I love fantasy, but I don't want to get comfortable there.

Yeah, and it's definitely, as I've said, like, that's where I tend to be comfortable in reading, so I think it's important to try to diversify that. So that's one of my goals. I think that was one of our goals last year. It continues to be one of my goals this year. Nothing has changed there in that respect. The other thing that I would love for us to see in terms of who we cover on the podcast is.

I agree. I, hmm, I have so many opinions. One, I think it's wild that the categories are Big Five and Not Big Five. You see the same thing in video games, right? It's either AAA or it ain't AAA. And there's a lot of middle ground there. Uh, which is nuts.

It's true.

I know we didn't make up the rules, but that's just kind of crazy to me. Also I don't think par well, maybe I'm assigning too much meaning just to the word parody. But, there's a balance between finding new authors and bringing them to our listeners and getting listeners because we're doing well known authors. And, by covering popular books, it brings in attention for the next time we cover a self pub or indie author.

Right, and I, I don't disagree there, but I also think that Most of the time we air on the small press side of things and I love that for us because I think those are the people who are doing the most interesting, like, bits of literature. But I think that we probably could have more quote unquote big name episodes bringing in listeners.

I feel like you just switched arguments there. Don't you want fewer big name episodes?

No, because I, I actually don't think that we have very many big name episodes at all.

Oh, maybe I misunderstood then. Don't you want more indie authors? Wait.

So, I want more indie authors, yes, but,

Oh, I think this is the problem, is if the categories are big five and not big five, then yeah. But I think you're saying we want to kind of scooch to the extremes a little bit. More very small press and more very big names.

Yes. Uh, yes, I, I think so. Like, yes, I want more parody between the two categories, but I also think that we, we want more extremes on either side.

Let's pander a little bit, hell yeah!

Yeah. Yeah, like, I think, I think we should pander to the really popular people so we can do the really less popular people.

Let's bring it all in. Big group hug, I love it.

Yeah.

Something I've been toying around with is our non book episodes. They're very fun, they tend to get a lot of listens. Should we be doing more, like, broad topic thematic episodes? I don't know, are people interested in that? It seems like it is, but that also could be because of the guests, I don't know. Yeah, I'm not sure where I fall on that exactly, but it's definitely something that I'm not going to let just drop aside.

Yeah, I don't know, but if you have thoughts, please email us, fictiontransplot at gmail dot com. We would be very interested in hearing your opinions.

Yeah, what do you guys want to listen to? I do think there's appeal in a conversation that doesn't cut out halfway through and say, if you haven't read the book, be careful. But we'll see, yeah. Well, Sarah, I think that about wraps it up. Thank you for doing fiction fans with me for the last, I'm not going to count however many years, three.

I think this makes it three.

Well, we're close to three. February is the technical anniversary, but

Technically, yes, February, but like, this is basically our This is this is the 30 year anniversary episode, even if we haven't been doing it for three years at this point.

yeah.

I didn't think that I would enjoy it, but I have. So, thank you for dragging me into doing this podcast with you.

I'm so glad it worked out and that you're not just humoring me every day.

I'm not just humoring you. I do genuinely really enjoy it. I've had I've had a good time.

Thank you, Sarah, and thank you, listener, for listening to this episode of Fiction Fans.

Come disagree with us! We are on BlueSky and Instagram, at FictionFansPod. You can also email us gmail. com.

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Thanks again for listening, and may your villains always be defeated. Bye!