I don’t see any point in making resolutions that I’m not going to keep, so for now I’m just going to try to say “no” a bit more often, especially when it involves people asking me to do work for free. In any case, to be honest my planning horizon doesn’t extend much beyond February. If I manage to get through that month without any major disasters the year will have gone well and I can start thinking about other things. I’ve just had to turn down an event in Bath because I’ll be in London at the time. February is that sort of busy.

Meanwhile some of my friends are resolving to do good things. Jo Hall is once again going to read more women authors, which is a fine and wonderful thing. I understand that Pete Sutton will be joining her in the challenge this year. I’ve just been looking at a year in review piece I have written for someone, and the stats look like this:

Male authors: Ian McDonald, Paul Cornell, David Barnett, Ken Liu, Hannu Rajaniemi, Ante Aikio, Robert Irwin. 7 in total.

Female authors: Catherynne Valente, Emma Newman, Sylvia Moreno-Garcia, Aliette de Bodard, Nnedi Okorafor, Naomi Novik, Elizabeth Hand, Carolyn Ives Gilman, Rachel Hartman, Justina Robson, Ann Leckie, Stephanie Saulter, Natasha Pulley, Zen Cho, Leena Krohn, Maria Turtschaninoff. 16 in total.

PoC count: 6 of 23 (possibly 7 if you count Sami as PoC, which I think you probably should).

Translated works: 4 of 23.

The list isn’t very good with regard to actual LGBT authors, but in terms of books with major LGBT characters I have 12 of 23.

The obvious conclusions from this are that a) I’m a hideously bigoted feminazi who is out to destroy all men, and b) that I need to read some non-binary authors.