As we move towards year end, everyone’s publishing their top-tens/best-of lists. So I thought I’d get in on the action too. But being me, I decided I’d put a bit of a spin on the idea and look back at which of my 2019 posts were the most popular. So here’s the “best of,” as voted by you!
10) How to grab your copy of Joe Ballen book 3
Starting us off at number 10, my pre-order announcement for Transformation Protocol, which included a link to read the first chapter. The Joe Ballen books have always had a big emotional connection for me, but Transformation Protocol took it a step further, and it was hard work writing and editing this one. That’s said, I think it was definitely worth it and love the response the book has had, making it especially nice that there was so much interest in its release.
9) New sci-fi and science reads for June 2019
This was something new for me this year: monthly columns looking at new releases in sci-fi and science books. This is the first of two of these posts to make it into the top ten, which suggests they are worth continuing. Hopefully you found a few good suggestions in them.
8) One Small Step…
The biggest anniversary of the year! A few of my memories and reflections on the great event, plus the NASA connection with my home town. After all this time, the Apollo missions still resonate, and with the recent upsurge in interest in planetary exploration from many different groups, perhaps we’ll see another visit soon.
7) Time travel top ten
I shared some of my all-time favorite movies, TV shows, and books in this post, including one of my favorite Star Trek DS9 episodes. What would you do if you could go back (or forward) in time?
6) The sound of sci-fi: my top ten sci-fi soundtracks
I enjoy music as much as anyone and even played in a rock band for several years. My tastes are quite diverse, so this post explores some of my favorite sci-fi tunes from movies and TV. Which ones would you pick?
5) Lunacy–back in style
I’m fairly sure the word “lunacy” appeared in 99.9% of moon-related stories this year, but I’d like to think I got there first :-). This was my skeptical look at NASA’s plans to establish a base on the Moon within five years.
4) Using Scrivener for a series bible
Scrivener is my writing software of choice. Here, I talked about how I use Scrivener to store all my background information on Joe Ballen’s world but experience problems with saving and backing up my projects.
3) New sci-fi and science reads for October 2019
My most popular “reads” post of the year, this featured an interesting non-fiction title from Sasha Sagan, daughter of Carl.
2) Do you have star potential?
This post launched a contest to find voice actors to feature in my book trailer for Transformation Protocol. It generated a small, but extremely talented, pool of applicants, and you can watch—and hear—the final result here. Look out for a blog post next year about the making of the trailer.
And my most popular post of the year was… drumroll please…
1) Welcome to Transformation Protocol launch week!
We started with Joe Ballen 3, and we’re finishing there too. This isn’t rigged, I promise :-). I was excited to announce the launch back in June of the latest installment in the series. The official launch event was at my local comicon—Graphic-Con in Sudbury. I hope to be there in 2020 with soon-to-be-published Logan’s World and possibly another surprise. Watch this space…
So that was the year that (almost) was on my blog. Did you have a favorite post? Are there any topics you’d like to see more (or less) of in 2020? Let me know in the comments.
Happy holidays!
