This is a long one, so buckle up.

What I've been up to:

Stories:

Since September, I've had another story published! This is my 4th and final one of 2024, and it took 2nd place in the contest that I wrote it for:

• ​"Two Earthlings" - TL;DR Press 1K Word Herd Competition Anthology

Awards (sort of):

• Two of my 2024 stories are awards eligible and are on the Nebula Reading List for SFWA members!
  • ​"Proprietary Technology"​
  • ​"Two Earthlings"​
• ​"Proprietary Technology" was also nominated by Radon Journal for the BEST AMERICAN SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY 2024 anthology. Decisions will be made in March 2025!
• ​"Two Earthlings" was also nominated by TL;DR Press for the Pushcart Prize 2024.

Interviews:

• I did a chaotic interview for Radon Journal where I discussed the insidious rise of subscriptions, as well as my dislike of chapter titles and first person POV.

What I'm working on:

I have countless WIPs, but for December I'm focusing on these two, which are (hopefully) in the polishing stage:

• BLOOD TIES - a science fantasy novel where a human diplomat and an alien prince go on the run after they're framed for the deaths of the royal family, with an alien baby in tow.
• DEVIL'S BARGAIN - a gaslamp fantasy novella that takes place in an alternate 1920s Chicago, where a best-selling author teams up with a disgraced airship captain and a hardened detective to take back [REDACTED], which was stolen from him by his wealthy sister-in-law.

I am also still half-heartedly poking at the novel I started for Not-NaNoWriMo, which made it to 16K before the election results completely killed any motivation I had to write new things. Anyone else feeling that way? Yeah. Maybe someday I'll find the motivation to continue this one, because I was really enjoying the shenanigans my undead bounty hunter was getting up to in space.

The Latest:

Latest Read:

Two Adam Higginbotham books, Challenger and Midnight in Chernobyl. I'm on a non-fiction kick and I love disasters, so sue me.

Latest Watch:

Too many things to mention, but the ones that stood out the most were the new documentaries about the JonBenet Ramsey case, the Zodiac Killer, and the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

Latest Listen:

The podcast Kill List was absolutely fascinating and will keep you up at night.

What's Next:

I already have 3 stories slated to come out in 2025!

• "Maintenance" - This was co-written with Kat Veldt and will appear in Issue 97 of Andromeda Spaceways Magazine. This is our second collaboration as co-authors! "Welcome" was our first story, and was published by Archive Of The Odd.
• "Specter" - This will appear in the March 2025 edition of After Dinner Conversation.
• And a currently-untitled fantasy story will appear in the Blackwick Writers Guild 2025 Zine (publication date currently pending). In the interest of full disclosure, I co-founded this writing group, and I run this zine :)

Other Musings:

My website is a constant work-in-progress (if you've seen me try out approximately 20 different themes in the past few weeks, no you haven't), and it's made me wonder about the usefulness of creating a page that is dedicated to my WIPs and/or the books I have on sub.

Back when I first signed my agent, it was a huge no-no to speak about when your project went on sub, what it was about, how many rejections it got, etc. Agents on Twitter warned their agented clients not to talk about those things, and also warned querying writers not to talk openly about their own rejections, as that influenced them whenever they read through stories in their slush pile.

But I'm wondering if it moves the needle now, just like mood boards, playlists, and agent's/editor's guide posts seem to move the needle for people. Making a page on my website for my WIPs/books on sub is far easier than forcing myself to be a graphic designer/TikTok/Instagram influencer, which I most definitively am not.

I've also been having lots of thoughts about my android/human forbidden romance era, which resulted in multiple novels in the mid-2010s. One of those got me my agent, the others sit on my hard drive, and my feelings about writing android characters now are very different from a decade or more ago. I have a feeling a blog post will appear on my website at some point, instead of me cluttering up my newsletter with such things.

See you all in 2025!