2015 in review: publications and thoughts on writing
If for some weird reason you’re feeling extrospective-that’s like me feeling introspective but you’re feeling it about me, right?-my bibliography page is always there. Right now it’s just reverse chronological order. One of the things that is on my to-do list is to get it sortable by story series, story type, etc. so that if you want to read all the stories in one universe, all the fantasy stories, all the stories that play with memory as a trope, whatever, you can do that. But that’s pretty low on my to-do list compared to, like, writing new stories, revising the ones I’ve written, sending them out, crazy stuff like that. (It also tends to get put below “read on couch with dog” so far. One of these days, though. Really.)
So 2015. I don’t want to talk about it publicly on the health front-if you’re a good enough friend that this rings alarm bells, by all means email me, but it is very hard to be both succinct and polite about how 2015 was for me health-wise. Ah, I have the word: disappointing. There we are. But on the writing front: great stuff. I mainly wrote long things-five short stories compared to twenty-two in 2014-but I’m really happy with the long stuff I wrote. Next year should be an interesting mix. I went to the Starry Coast workshop in September, a first for me and a really great experience. And here’s what I published:
“The Hanged Woman’s Portion,” Not Our Kind, Alliteration Ink Publishing, January 2015.
“Blue Ribbon,” Analog, March 2015.
“Empty Monuments,” co-written with Alec Austin. Insert Title Here [anthology], Fablecroft Publishing, April 2015.
“Out of the Rose Hills,” Beneath Ceaseless Skies, May 2015 (Issue #173).
“It Brought Us All Together,” Strange Horizons, 13 July 2015.
“Draft Letter on Research Potential Suggested by Recent Findings in Gnome Genomics,” Evil Girlfriend Media shorts, 13 July 2015.
“Ten Stamps Viewed Under Water,” F&SF, Sep/Oct 2015.
“The Many Media Hypothesis,” Nature Futures, 7 October 2015.
“Human Trials,” co-written with Alec Austin. Abyss and Apex, October 2015.
“Points of Origin,” Tor.com, 4 November 2015.
That’s seven science fiction stories, three fantasy. Two anthologies, eight magazines. A mix of longer and shorter, within the short story category. Obviously two with Alec and the rest solo. Some of it just romps along, some of it was intensely personal, and you can’t always tell which by the tone. And honestly I’m glad to do both. One of the ways I describe my job is that I make nerds laugh, and I am proud to do that. But I do other things, too, and I’m glad to do them. Even when they make me spend the day the story goes public climbing the walls about how particular people in my life are going to respond.
I started describing some of the stories I’m doing as finding an interesting cliff to jump off and hoping there’s water at the bottom. So far there’s been water. Some of you have been that water for me. Thanks for that. Of course, it encourages me to do more of the same in the year to come, but that’s all right, I think. At least it won’t be boring. It’s never that.