Zeus is confronted once more by his old nemesis.

What followed was not pretty.

2010 is close enough now that I can see it from here — and I’ve wrapped up nearly everything I needed to do in 2009 — so now is a good time to do a quick retrospective on the last year in a professional sense and talk a little about what I see ahead in 2010.

First, 2009. It was an interesting year. Some of the things I liked:

• Working on Stargate: Universe as its Creative Consultant and helping to build a TV show from the ground up;
• Winning the Best Related Book Hugo for Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded, and having Zoe’s Tale and METAtropolis nominated for their own awards;
• Writing The God Engines, which was something very different for me;
• Helping Strange Horizons meet its fundraising goals for the year.

What I didn’t like: Basically that a not insignificant amount of my time was wasted this year by people who are not me, which is something I don’t appreciate. It’s bad enough when I waste my own time, but at least that’s on me, and it’s my time to waste. Other people wasting my time, on the other hand, just pisses me off. I could go on, but it’s best to leave it at that.

One side effect of this wasted time, however, is that it’s put a divot in my novel production schedule. The initial work on that divot, to be sure, was done by me when I pulled The High Castle out of the production schedule at the end of last year. But there are other factors involved, and regardless of how I choose to portion out the responsibility for the divot, the fact is there was no new novel in 2009 (The God Engines is a novella), and currently there’s no firm timeframe for a 2010 novel release. As someone who is currently making a living writing novels, that’s not a positive thing.

Which brings me to my plans for 2010:

1. Writing novels;

2. Aaaaand that’s pretty much what I got.

Well, that’s not entirely accurate; I have other plans as well, which I can’t tell you about at the moment if only because they’re in an embryonic stage, so there’s no point going into detail about them, and they might not pan out in any event. Writing novels, on the other hand, is something I am entirely in control of (Step one: Put ass in chair; Step two: Write until said ass is sore; Step three: Repeat steps one and two for 100,000 words) and so it’s what I plan to do.

Whether this means there’s a new novel published in 2010 is not really up to me; that’s a production schedule issue. But it does mean there will be new novels written in 2010. That much I can guarantee.

As for what of mine will be published in 2010, here’s what we have:

• Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded: The Tor trade paperback edition, which is out next week (which is to say that it may already be in your bookstores).
• METAtropolis: The trade hardcover edition (i.e., not limited) from Tor, which is scheduled for June 8.

As for anything else relating to me and 2010 — well, we’ll have to get there and see. I’m looking forward to the new year, however. I suspect 2010 will be a better year all around. At the very least, I hope it is.