and then I wrote

[calimac]

Yesterday I wrote on where I traveled in 2007; now to my more traditional end-of-year post. This has been a good year for publications for me.

1. The appendix ("The Inklings: Their Lives and Works") and index to The Company They Keep: C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien As Writers in Community by Diana Pavlac Glyer (Kent State University Press). The appendix is a series of short bio-bibliographical essays on the 19 canonical Inklings. I may be the only person who's been spending years reading the lesser Inklings' scholarly books just because Inklings wrote them - I have 95 books by and about them here, and that's excluding anything by Lewis, Tolkien, or Williams - so I was a good person to write this. As for the index, I already wrote here about that effortful project.
2. Two essays in C.S. Lewis: Life, Works, and Legacy edited by Bruce L. Edwards (Praeger). This is a huge, four-volume collection aimed at libraries. If it gets any use, it'll be slowly through the years, as opposed to the splash the previous book is making in the field right now. The first essay, "Gifted Amateurs: C.S. Lewis and the Inklings," is pretty much my magnum opus, if 16,000 words can deserve that title. It's a summation of everything I've learned about the history and nature of the Inklings in over 30 years of studying the subject, and in it I try to correct some of the inaccuracies and sloppinesses that keep finding their way into print even from some reputable scholars. The other essay, "C.S. Lewis Scholarship: A Bibliographical Overview," co-authored with Diana Glyer, is just a reader's guide to good books, a type of work I live for.
3. "The Year's Work in Tolkien Studies 2004" in the 2007 issue of the annual Tolkien Studies (West Virginia University Press), the fourth year of my run through everything on this topic. Best books of the year? The Battle for Middle-earth by Fleming Rutledge, War and the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien by Janet Brennan Croft, and The Science of Middle-earth by Henry Gee.
4. Nine reviews and two feature articles for San Francisco Classical Voice. One of the features was a survey of Eighth Symphonies derived from an LJ post; the other was a report on a musicology conference. This is only half as many reviews as I wrote in 2006, but the site decided to cut down on coverage, and it would have been eleven reviews had I not had to turn one down because it was the week I was moving, and cancel on another due to illness (somebody else was found to cover it).
5. Half a dozen reviews, mostly of books on Tolkien, for Mythprint. This is changing editors, and I'm not at all sure if my supply of free review copies will continue.

But this year I don't have any new material in press. A survey article on music that inspired Tolkien and music inspired by him is in press for a book on Tolkien and music edited by Bradford Lee Eden, but I wrote most of that several years ago. Writing the 2005 Tolkien survey is my project for January. I had a more intense year in 2006, when I prepared the Inklings material and the index. I admire the stamina of professional authors and scholars who can produce much more than that, and do it every year.

Comments

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure that 16,000 words is the most I've ever managed in a single piece as well, at least for something I completed. Anyway, congratulations on what looks to have been a very productive year indeed on the publication front. You seem to be popping up in more fanzine lettercols these days as well.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I could have mentioned that. I made a resolution a while ago to stop dumping fmz in a pile and getting around to reading them later, but reading and responding right away if I have anything worth saying at all. So now here I am, engaged in a slow-motion "whither fandom?" discussion with Peter Weston.