Ye Olde Year’s End Wrap Up

/ Sunday, December 31st, 2017 / No Comments »

Writing-career wise, 2017 was a deceptively quiet year for me, with a lot of hard work going on behind the scenes but not a lot to show for it publicly. With 2014, 2015 and 2016 being as lively as they were, I concede that a lull was inevitable.

But I didn’t fall altogether silent. These things happened:

    Me at Worldcon 75 in Helsinki after swiping Ian Watson’s Staff of Cthulhu. Photo by Anita

  • My novella “The Quiltmaker” was reprinted in the January issue of Apex Magazine.
  • My anthology Clockwork Phoenix 5 (published in 2016) mustered a powerful ensemble performance, first making the 2016 Locus Magazine Recommended Reading List, then landing a nomination for the World Fantasy Award for Best Anthology! The latter, as you might gather, was a first for me, and I’m still pumped about it.
  • I produced, on time, four more issues of my online zine, Mythic Delirium. I posted a 2017 awards eligibility post over at the Mythic Delirium site, where you can catch up on all the original poems and stories.
  • And a bit of lagniappe: Short stories I picked for Mythic Delirium and Clockwork Phoenix 5 were finalists for the Nebula, Aurealis and World Fantasy Awards.
  • Me reading at the Outer Dark Symposium. Love that banner! Photo by Eric Schaller

  • In March, I want to the first ever Outer Dark Symposium on the Greater Weird in Atlanta, Georgia, a wonderful event where, among other things, I read excerpts from my short stories “Her Acres of Pastoral Playground” and “The Cruelest Team Will Win.” You can listen to that here.
  • In August, Anita and I celebrated our 25th anniversary with a trip to Finland and Iceland that not at all coincidentally included attending Worldcon 75 in Helsinki. (I wrote about some aspects of the trip here.) The Hugo Award ceremony was particularly spectacular, and I had the honor of speaking on the “Remembering Tanith Lee” panel about Tanith’s contributions to the Clockwork Phoenix series.
  • The “Remembering Tanith Lee” panel at Worldcon 75, photo courtesy Ian Whates. From left to right, me, Ian, Shawna McCarthy and John-Henri Holmberg

  • A new short story, “Binding,” appeared in August in Phantasm/Chimera: An Anthology of Strange and Troubling Dreams, edited by Scott Dwyer.
  • A new poem, “The Headless Hero,” appeared in the September issue of Dreams & Nightmares.
  • Another new short story, “Burn the Kool Kidz at the Stake,” appeared in the October issue of Not One of Us.
  • A particularly fun one: my horror story “The Button Bin” was translated into Chinese (the first time it’s ever been translated anywhere!) in the October issue of Science Fiction World Translations
  • And a cool surprise: my short story “Her Acres of Pastoral Playground” has been translated into Ukrainian!
  • Another new poem, “Draught,” appeared in the fall 2017 issue of Star*Line.
  • I dig this photo of me that Beth Gwinn took for Locus.

  • A neat final act, especially given how quiet things have been: Locus Magazine published a lengthy interview with me in their December issue.
  • Additional fun: helping out with the successful Kickstarter for the second season of Kaleidocast resulted in this chibi drawing.
  • Chibi me by Jennifer Chu

Most of my writing efforts went into completing an extensive revision of my novel Trail of Shadows, an expansion of my short story “The Hiker’s Tale.” The manuscript is still out on submission. Then I wrote two drafts of “The Comforter,” a novella-length sequel to my stories “The Button Bin” and “The Quiltmaker” (that also pulls in my story “Gutter” and a couple others that haven’t been published yet). I am in fact switching back and forth between revising “The Comforter” and typing this blog entry.

Here’s hoping that playing the long game pays off in 2018. Cheers!

#SFWApro

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