BarryHutchison

Thanks largely to the crumbling worldwide economy which has already seen hundreds of thousands of people lose their jobs, 2008 will be considered by many as a terrible year.

For me, though, it were frickin’ ace!

Why?  Well, for starters I got an agent.  In February of this year I signed with Fraser Ross Associates, and this signalled something of a turnaround in my writing career, largely because I realised I should probably start taking it all a bit more seriously.

Also, top UK publisher, Egmont Press, published three books I wrote for them.  Beastly! Tiger Terror; Beastly! Spider Swat, and; Ben 10 Book One all came out between March and November this year.

As if that’s not enough, Egmont will be releasing three more books by me in the first half of 2009, so by June I’ll have a grand total of six novels published.  Not too shabby, eh?

BUT THAT’S NOT ALL!  In October I was made an offer by one of the UK’s largest and most respected publishers for a series of six children’s books.  I still can’t give away many details at the moment, but I can reveal the series is the much-mentioned PROJECT IFR, which you can do a search for and read more about elsewhere in this blog.

Basically it’s a six-part horror series for 9-12 year olds, and book one will be on shelves in February 2010.  So a bit of a wait, but new books will be coming out every six months up until mid-2012.  It’s all very exciting, and I’ll be revealing more info here as soon as I can.

On the non-writing front, 2008 saw me move to Ireland, and then move back five months later.  All being well we’ll be heading back over during the early parts of 2009, although hopefully the pound/euro exchange rate will pick up a bit before we do.

And that’s more or less been it for 2008.  There’s GANGRENE, my comic book project too, but that has stalled for the moment while I push on with writing book two of PROJECT IFR, and redrafting book one.

I’m stealing an internet connection again, which is why this post is all very short and to the point.  Once I have a proper net connection I can be vague and rambling again, but for now conciseness is my watchword.

Although looking at it written down, I’m not even sure “conciseness” is even a word.  Let’s just agree it is and say no more about it.

There’s no danger of me being back online before midnight tomorrow, so I’ll take this opportunity to wish you all a Happy New Year, and thank you all for reading in 2008.  Hopefully you’ll join me again in 2009, which promises to be an even more exciting 12 months than the last 12.

All the best!

B.