After four years of blogging, I feel like I’ve found a good rhythm. I’m keeping on top of things, with plenty of reviews and some rather good (if I do say so myself) articles every month. If WordPress stats are anything to go by, it looks like I’m keeping more people than just myself happy too. But there’s always room to improve. Here are some of the things I have planned for 2023.

Author Interviews

In 2022 I managed to get my interviews off the ground, with a massive thanks to Matt Adcock and Marc Collins, who both reached out to me. Taking this forward, I plan to be reaching out to authors in the coming year and having them come over for a chat. There is a long list of authors I’d love to have on the blog, but if there’s any authors you think I should reach out to, just let me know.

Community

This past week, I left one of the Discord groups I used most in terms of talking books. There are a couple of reasons for that, but they all boil down to one key point: I can’t find a science fiction community that I vibe with. With some uncertainty hanging over various parts of social media, it’s increasingly difficult to fond groups of like-minded readers. Right now I’m toying with the idea of a Discord server of my own, but that’s blue-sky thinking and a whole lot of effort, so I’m hoping someone can talk me out of it soon.

Conventions

I’m already booked in for Sci-Fi Weekender 14 in March, which will be my tenth visit to the convention/festival. Due to the farming calendar, it’s looking unlikely I’ll be able to attend the events after. That does free up some convention-intended cash, however. I’m pretty set on attending another convention in 2023, and there are a fair few bookish ones that have caught my eye. As always, if you’re a congoer, feel free to drop me a recommendation for your favourite events.

Deep Dives

This is one of my 2022 goals that fell of the wagon, but I’m recommitting to it for 2023. These deep dives will go into detail on a single book/series/author and be a lot more elaborate than my usual reviews. This is the first half of my goal to make a push for a more academic style here At Boundary’s Edge. I don’t know which books I’ll focus on with this, but I’m sure I’ll think of something.

Discover New Authors

Finding debuts is hard, especially when you’re more a fan of older works. But I have completed a lot of older series of late, and my shelves are crying out for fresh names. This is new-to-me authors rather than debuts (though they can easily be both) but I am going to focus on newer, active authors, rather than classic authors I’ve somehow overlooked.

Empires of Science Fiction

This is my big plan for 2023. A series of articles in which I rewrite and update my MA dissertation. These will be fully academic articles, and I’m currently hoping to put one out every month until it’s done. This is a project I’ve wanted to get to for a long while now, because I’ve consumed a whole lot more information since I wrote the first version over four years ago. I’m also really hoping this one proves to be popular. if it does, it could lead to similar projects further down the line.

Halo

This is a fairly simple and self-explanatory goal. In 2023, I’m committing to an exploration of the Halo franchise. I’ve got a bunch of the books ready to read, the games are installed and waiting to be played, and I have high hopes that the mix of big ideas and military action hits the mark for me. This will form my next big readthrough (unless I actually hate it) so if you know any Halo fans, send them over my way. We’ll have a lot to discuss.