It feels like Anita and I haven’t had much time to take a breath since we got back from from Finland and Iceland in August. In my editorial for the newest issue of Mythic Delirium, I wrote a bit about how that trip went, and I’m still a bit too strapped for time to elaborate further, so I may just never get to. But some cool things have happened since we came back — so here, succinctly, are some writing career-related things that have gone down since our WorldCon adventure.
 
Translation into Chinese

My Nebula Award-nominated horror tale “The Button Bin” has been translated into another language for the first time ever — and it’s quite an auspicious foreign debut, as the story appears this month in Science Fiction World, China’s largest-circulation sf/fantasy magazine. That cover art is off the chain.
 
Two new horror stories

Phantasm/Chimera: An Anthology of Troubling Dreams, edited by Scott Dwyer, includes my horrotica tale-within-a-tale “Binding,” described in a Ginger Nuts of Horror review as “no-frills ghoulish fun.” You can get the anthology here.
 

The newest issue of John Benson’s Not One of Us features a surreal, stream-of-consciousness horror venture from me, “Burn the Kool Kidz at the Stake.” I’m tickled to be back in the pages of this long-running dark fiction zine, which you can subscribe to here.
 
One new poem

The latest issue of David C. Kopaska-Merkel’s Dreams & Nightmares contains “The Headless Hero,” the first poem I’ve had published in two years (and likely the last poem of mine to appear for a long while). Nonetheless, it’s cool to be back in the old stomping grounds.

“The Headless Hero” was inspired by a strange dream about a alternate-universe television show wherein the main protagonist has no body (thus the title is a playful inversion). The rest of the poem is playful, too: you can check out the zine here and see for yourself.

While I’m at it, I feel a need to note, tongue-in-cheek, that all my new publications this year are seriously old-school; that is, no e-versions exist. It’s like I’m back in the 1990s!
 
Translation into Ukrainian

“The Button Bin” isn’t the only story of mine slithering its way into another language. What you’re looking at is a Ukrainian translation of my Lovecraftian tale “Her Acres of Pastoral Playground” at the Warkô Movčök blog. Rather than a commercial venture, this was a labor of love done by professional translator Babasik Funkie on his own time.

Babasik tells me he’s working on the companion story, “Silent in Her Nest,” which flatters me hugely, not the least because I don’t think many people even know that “Her Acres” has a companion story! That’s some impressive “deep cut” knowledge of my oeuvre.

I’ll share that translation when it appears, too.
 
Works in progress

Earlier this year, I mentioned that I finished an intensive rewrite of Trail of Shadows, a novel that’s an expansion of my short story “The Hiker’s Tale.” The novel remains on the desk of the personage I pitched it to, so cross your fingers.

In the meantime, I’ve been working on a novella with the working title of “The Comforter,” the next story in the sequence begun with “The Button Bin” and “The Quiltmaker.” I wrote most of this one longhand — in fact, one of my fondest memories from the trip to Helsinki involves simply sitting on a bench atop a hill in the little park next to our hotel, enjoying the warm sun and a gentle breeze as I scribble away with pen on steno pad, concocting new terrors for my characters to endure. I’ve at last completed the first draft, but it’s mostly handwritten, so now comes the part where I transcribe it all into a word processor file.

That’s a lot to pack into a post — but now I’m caught up!

#SFWApro

Posted in Editing, Fiction, Mythic Delirium, Poetry, Short stories, The Spider Tapestries, Unseaming, Writing