So, I did it – on Christmas Day, I finished the fifty-second new book of the year – Creeping in Reptile Flesh by Robert Hood (great way to finish my reading year, with a truly fantastic writer). So I did it – 52 new books, 65 books in total – the most I’ve read for a long time.

During the year, I kept track of my reading by recording each book I read, the dates on which I read them and a short comment about the book. Next year, when I’m reading my 52 books, I think I’ll also add a bit of a scoring system, so I can easily see the books I considered the best of the year.

Having not done that, I’m going to refer to a) my memory and b) my list and give you my ten most memorable books of the year.

Eats Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss (read Jan 6-7 at writing retreat, spreadsheet comment - Was good to get myself updated on my punctuation - it's something I need to keep thinking about and working on and not be lazy about) Being a child of the 70s, my education in terms of punctuation and grammar isn’t that good. I’ve got a pretty good grasp of it naturally, but it’s still something I need to work on (as my copyedit for Love in Control proves). Good start to a very writerly year.

Chronicles of Amber by Roger Zelazny (read Jan 1-18, mostly at writing retreat, spreadsheet comment -Fan-bloody-tastic. Very impressive, to see such tight plotting and such vivid characterisation and see that you don't have to crap on with description and padding - the story can be all) This was a Christmas present from my brother and I have to say – Bless you, Matthew! It’s a collection of the first four Amber books, and the writing and the story amazed me. It’s not often that I remember a story so vividly, but I already know this is one of my all-time classics.

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (read May 22-25, spreadsheet comment - Fabulous, loooooove Neil Gaiman. It seems so simple, and yet you stop to think about what was involved in creating it and realise that's deceptive. Damn him). I read two Neil Gaiman’s this year – the other being American Gods, and this is the one that most affected me. I loved it – so sweet and eery and scary and wonderful. And it inspired my own writing, so thanks Neil.

The Ambassador’s Mission by Trudi Canavan (read Aug 8-Sep 3, spreadsheet comment - Trudi's new manuscript - boy the woman can tell a rip-roaring story! Couple of aspects that didn't work for me, but otherwise shazaam!) Yes, I know, this wasn’t something available for just anyone to read – the book hits the shelves next year. But I had to mention it, cause I love Trudi’s writing and damn girl!

Booklife by Jeff VanderMeer (read Nov 22-25, spreadsheet comment - Jeff VanderMeer's book on living life as a writer. Some interesting thoughts - will be using it for the PR plan. Also nice to see that the way I've been thinking lately matches other experiences) If you want a career as a writer, you must read this book. That is all.

Horn by Peter Ball (read June 6 on way home from Natcon, spreadsheet comment - Novella from Peter M Ball. Very punchy and good story, well told, although some of the graphic details of it were very disturbing). On the way to dinner on the Sunday night of the convention, I ignorantly followed Jason Fischer’s directive and teased Alisa Krasnostein with the word “pop”. Alisa, I hearby apologise for that.

Siren’s Beat by Tansy Rayner Roberts and Roadkill by Robert Sherman (read November 25, spreadsheet comment - A double from Alisa's Twelth Planet Press. I really don't like stories without a clear ending - so it ruined Rob's for me, which was fantabulous and fantastical in a spooky way. Tansy's kicked arse. Great characters, great idea)  This was the beginning of the great Urban Fantasy run of 2009 – I overdosed on mythical creatures running around the city, which is a great way to go, I must say.

A Book of Endings by Deborah Biancotti (read November 1-11, spreadsheet comment - My lord, that Deborah Biancotti is a fabulous writer. I always knew a collection of hers would be a good read, and it was incredible. And inspiring) I’d been waiting for someone to publish a collection of Deb’s short stories, and it didn’t disappoint. Yet another writer I want to be when I grow up (along with Rob Hood, Trudi Canavan and Margo Lanagan).

Ulysses by James Joyce (read Feb 25-April 13, spreadsheet comment - Gave up half way through - language is beautiful, but I don't have a clue what's going on, even after reading the opening essay telling me what's going on. Might try another Joyce though) I got more than half-way, which I consider quite an achievement. Stunning language, but I do like a plot in my stories. And Leopold Bloom has got to be one of the most meh protagonists every created.

Change Your Thinking by Sarah Edelmen (read May 6-21, spreadsheet comment - Gave me some good insight into myself, made some notes in diary about not being so black and white, more accepting and having a more realistic belief system) This was a big year for me in terms of self-discovery, and this book helped to make things clearer for me.

Just stopping at ten books is hard. I want to tell you, for example, about Tracey O’Hara’s reimagining of vampires in Night’s Cold Kiss or the incredibly sensual experience of Erica Hayes’ Shadowfae (not just the reading – the book itself is wonderful to hold) or how PS I Love You reduced me to tears again and again or about the mastery of Graham Joyce in TWOC.

All in all, it was a pretty good reading year for me – very few duds, lots of interesting stuff, and one absolute classic to rest alongside important childhood/teenage books like LOTR and Narnia and the Runestaff. And when I look at my shelves and see books like Slights and Little Brother, well I’m all excited about my reading in 2010.

I arrived home from work yesterday to find a big fat package waiting for me. Insert squee here. Is it weird that I’m so excited to see my work pulled apart and all my weaknesses show up by someone?

Anyway, this is a new experience for me – having to sit down and go through a novel at such a painstaking level (although I did receive some of the nicest words a writer can – a light line-edit, cause the spelling and grammar are pretty right :)). So I thought I would document here my plans for how I’m going to do this, and then at the end let you know how it went.

I want to have the edits done and in the mail by January 4, so I’m free to focus on book two at the retreat (that’s more than a week before deadline). So, according to my work roster, between now and January 3 I’ve got seven full days off work, and four half days. That’s a total of 11 writing sessions. Now, I’m planning on taking both Christmas and Boxing Day off, so that leaves me with nine sessions.

So, this week goes a little like this – today I’m going to read through the edits, make notes to myself, and then choof on off to work this afternoon and let things simmer. Tomorrow and Thursday will be all day working on the manuscript. Then I get Friday, Saturday and Sunday away from it (again, more time for ideas to simmer).

The following week, I work on the manuscript all day Monday. Tuesday I’m at work early, and I hope to then work on the manuscript in the afternoon (I’ve never managed that before, so will be interesting to see if I can). Wednesday it’s manuscript in the morning, supermarket in the afternoon and then Thursday (NYE) I’m working all day (another opportunity for things to simmer).

Friday’s another all-dayer, then manuscript Saturday morning and work in the afternoon. Hopefully by the time I get to Sunday January 3 (my last full dayer), I’ll be in a position to do all the picky stuff, and have it finalised to pop into the mail on Monday.

I read the edit letter last night, and there’s a couple of things that my editor mentioned that have intrigued me, particularly in light of some of the postings I’ve been doing lately about feminism. I’m really looking forward to going through the manuscript and seeing exactly where the things she’s noticed are occurring and what they mean, about me and about the story.

Ah, I love being a writer.

As I’ve noted, I’ve been reading the Anita Blake books and watching season one of True Blood. In both of these, the heroines started off quite sexually inexperienced – Sookie was a virgin, Anita had had just one sexual relationship. In Sookie’s case, she’s started sleeping with Bill – a vampire, and thus the first person she’s ever met who she can be completely comfortable with because of the impact of her special abilities. At the end of four books, Anita has kissed a few guys but that’s it – she’s even not sleeping with the man she thinks she might marry, because she’s convinced that she isn’t going to that until she has the commitment, after having had her heart broken.

However, this has caused a bit of a dilemma for me. A couple of years ago, I read a couple of the later Anita Blake books, so I am well aware that this changes, and Anita ends up with a variety of sexual partners. Then a few days ago, I read a collection of Sookie Stackhouse short stories and so I now know that Sookie also ends up with a variety of sexual partners, and in one short story has a one-night stand with a werewolf she’s just met.

So we have two characters who started off virginal or near to it and who had no real regards to their sexuality, and eventually they turn out to be quite comfortable with their sexuality and end up with quite the collection of lovers and exes. In the case of Anita, this is explained by the fact that she ends up with something called the arduer, and she must have sex to get rid of it – a lot of sex. Not sure if there is any explanation for Sookie’s change, apart from her developing and maturing and finding more potential lovers.

This combined in my mind with the contention in Beyond Heaving Bosoms by the super-smart ladies behind Smart Bitches, Trashy Books that a romance heroine must either be a virgin or not be able to enjoy sex until she encounters the hero. Here’s a quote from the book that tells where my head is going with this: “The sexually experienced woman in fiction still raises hackles and creates uncomfortable associations with uncleanness, the threat of infidelity and more degeneration.” The book goes on to tell some very real truths about romance, and the position of the woman compared to the man in this part of the relationship at least (particularly when almost always the man has HEAPS of sexual experience, and oftentimes the romance begins with him just seeing the heroine as his latest score on the way to a life of no-commitment).

Let’s face facts – this isn’t something that just happens in books. In the Real World, a woman who had a number of sexual partners is still seen as somehow loose or not quite right or just waiting for a real man, whereas in men it’s almost celebrated. How many people are looking at the current Tiger Woods situation and thinking that it makes Tiger ‘more human’, as if he wasn’t before.

I can’t see why this is – it’s not fair that there’s a double standard. And it’s sad to see it prevalent in the literary world. Why shouldn’t a woman who’s confident with her sexuality (whatever it is) be free to live her life happily making the choices that she wants. If she’s not hurting anyone, particularly herself, why can’t she see who she wants to see, sleep with whoever she wants to sleep with, without tags of whore or floozy or cheap being thrown at her?

My thoughts were coalesced this morning when I read this blog about a terrible story from America. A thirteen-year-old girl committed suicide after she was convinced her life had been ruined when she sent a naked picture of herself to a boy. How sad, that a girl with her whole life before her concluded it wasn’t worth living because she’d cheapened herself, become a whore for exploring her sexuality.

I was devastated when I read this, because I know myself how easy it is to have other people’s perspectives impact on your sexuality. I grew up Catholic in the 70s and 80s, and so was taught that sensations like this were wrong and evil. There were times when I felt so shamed by how I felt, the things that I did with boys that I liked, that it turned into panic attacks whenever a man showed any interest in me and resulted in me still being a virgin and very unsure of myself when I met my husband at the age of 28. It’s something that even after ten years of marriage, I still struggle with – that it’s perfectly natural to have sexual desire, to want to be pleasured and to pleasure.

So now I think that we as writers have a duty to portray female sexuality as a positive thing. We need to put role models out there for young girls and young women who are feeling desires and needs that don’t seem to conform to society’s belief of what a good woman is. I look at my three female heroines in the Balance of Power trilogy – Maggie Shaunessy, Ione Hammond Gorton and Bernadette Haraldson – and I’m proud that I’ve created three women who are comfortable with expressing their sexuality. They’ve had lovers previously – they aren’t ashamed of it, they aren’t going to apologise for it, and they’re happy that experience means that when they find the men they want to spend their lives with, they’re able to enjoy the sexual element of their relationships.

Hopefully one day, all women will be able to freely be who they are, without any judgements.

I’m admittedly new to this concept of considering feminism and the place of women in the world, so if I say something terribly unpolitically correct, I apologise.

I’ve been thinking about how language sets us up in various ways, and whether it’s possible for women to own previously male-only wordage. Now, I do believe that language is very important in terms of indicating how people think and feel, and educating them. For example, I am very much against people using terms like ‘spastic’ in anything but the medical definition of the condition.

However, I’m torn over the developments of words like chairman. I myself have never put a male-only connotation on that word – for me, it was just symbolic of the position someone held. Chairwoman is okay, assuming you know that it is a woman you’re talking about. I can live with chair (I happily called myself the chair of Conflux 4, but then I’ve not heard any other word but chair used for the position of head of a con committee). But chairperson freaks me. It seems a phrase that’s overly bowing to political correctness just for the sake of it.

This is something I’m looking at with my novel – we have a new chairman of the gadda council, only it’s a woman. Now, this is one woman who would NOT sit kindly with being called a chair (don’t call me a piece of furniture!), and I’m toying with the idea of sticking with the title of chairman for her, it being the official title of being all but the leader of the gadda. Although now I think of it, chairwoman is okay.

On Saturday, coming back from Sydney, my friend Alan and I were listening to ABC radio’s coverage of the cricket and one of the commentators used the phrase “night-watchperson” (for those who don’t know, a nightwatchman is a lower order batsman who comes in if needed at the end of a  day’s play, so you can keep the better batsmen fresh for the next day – not to mention the risk involved of getting out in the last few heated overs of a day’s play). Now, I’m sorry – but we’re listening to a game featuring men, and using a term devised by men as part of a game that was back then overwhelmingly played by men, and we can’t use the traditional terminology?

When I played cricket (which I did for four summers in the Sydney Women’s Cricket competition, and played alongside ex and future Australian players), we weren’t in the least bit fussed about the terminology. It was part of the game – so a nightwatchman was a nightwatchman. It didn’t make us feel less of a woman cause we were using a word that had a male suffix – it was a cricket word.

Am I wrong in thinking that phrases that point to the sexuality of a person within a role are okay (use man when male, use woman when female) but that phrases like “chairperson” or “nightwatchperson” have taken this to an extreme, especially when it’s clear whether you’re talking about a male or female? I don’t like *word*person for anything – it just sounds silly. Or, by feeling this, am I perpetrating the divide between men and women?

I’ve been watching True Blood (actually haven’t watched it for a while – not sure when I’ll get back to it, busy, busy, busy) and I’ve been trying to puzzle out why I’m not that into Sookie and Bill, whereas Sookie’s brother Jason and bestfriend Tara are becoming more and more fascinating.

I’ve decided the reason comes down to one word – change. I can see Jason and Tara having experiences which are opening their eyes, both to the world and to themselves, and as a result they’re becoming much more interesting people. People with depth, people who are good to watch because you’re not exactly sure what they’ll do next, cause THEY’RE not exactly sure what they’ll do next.

Whereas Sookie and Bill currently aren’t really changing, despite things that are happening (quite fraught in Sookie’s case). There’s no development with either of them, and now that I know them, I’m kinda not that interested in seeing more of them.

I’ve been reading the first Anita Blake Vampire Hunter books (I know, Urban Fantasy overload) and while I’m enjoying them, I’m having a similar problem to True Blood, in that Anita and Jean-Claude as a couple aren’t really working for me. Again, I think it’s the same issue – they aren’t changing. Yes, Anita is learning things about herself, but they don’t seem to be having an impact on her character – she’s still the same person at the end of book three that she was at the beginning of book one.

Now, perhaps if the series had started back when Anita became both an animator and a vampire hunter and so you got to see the development of her character from a reasonably innocent person to who she is now, maybe I’d be so intrigued that I’d well and truly be rooting for her whereas at the moment, I’m interested in the details of how she gets in and out of situations and the world that Hamilton has created rather than being into the characters, and that kinda has me wondering if I’ll keep reading past book four.

I then compare this to one of my favourite books – Pride and Prejudice. The beauty of that book is how Lizzie and Darcy work on each other – as they become more attracted, they find themselves starting to see the world through each other’s eyes and it awakens them to their own pride and prejudices. By the end of the book, they are different people and have as a result actually grown together into a very strong couple.

So I had a mad moment, thinking about my main characters in the trilogy and wondering if they changed, or whether they stayed static and thus could become boring. Within their individual story, there is a lot of change but when they appear in the other books as secondary characters, they stay pretty static. I might need to consider if that needs some work or not.