In 2021, with the exception of a handful of poems (and more on that below) I was pretty dormant as a writer of published fiction (all the action was on the journalism side of my life, subject matter that I don’t discuss here — that’s a whole separate, compartmentalized thing, like church and state, or Matt Murdoch and Daredevil, or Hannibal Lecter pre-Silence of the Lambs.)

So it’s pretty wild to arrive in 2022 and have four new short stories published within three months.

Three of them I’ve made previous mention of. The very first week of January brought the publication of “Falling Is What It Loves” in issue #69 of Not One of Us. I wrote about that in more detail in this post. It’s a story that’s more personal to me than they normally are, but also features an alien that juggles its own multi-dimensional eyeballs.

Next up came the Plutonian Press anthology Pluto in Furs 2, which contains two new stories from me, “Abhors” and “This Rider of Fugitive Dawns.” (And also a story from my mentee Hysop Mulero, “This Is You On Lust.”) I’ve written about these tales before, too, but I did not yet have the book in hand. Now I do, and it is quite the beauty — you should get one, too! [Photos by Anita Allen]

And now, something completely new. I’m thrilled to share that Cosmic Horror Monthly is about to bring out another fresh-from-the-oven story from me, “Matres Lachrymarum.” I’m incredibly grateful for the opportunity to work with zinemasters Charles Tyra and Carson Winter to aim this Lovecraftian nightmare your way. Thanks, too, to beta readers C.S.E. Cooney, Carlos Hernandez, Amanda McGee and Cathy Reniere, to Sonya Taaffe who helped me with the title, and to the members of the Virtual Gumbo Cafe who kept me company as I worked on the first draft.

“Matres Lachrymarum” is set in the same grim future as my story “Drift from the Windrows” that appeared in Tommorrow’s Cthulhu, Tales to Terrify and Aftermath of an Industrial Accident — circumstances have just, um, advanced a bit further down the road to hell, heh, heh. To anyone who might wonder whether the title is a Dario Argento reference, the answer is — kind of?

The April issue of Cosmic Horror Monthly is on its way to mailboxes right now. Look how beautiful! Here’s how you get one. [Images courtesy Cosmic Horror Monthly]

My creative output last year, at least the published creative output, amounted to three poems — and now two of them are nominated for the Rhysling Award! My thanks to the members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association who found my poems “Astynome, After” and “Dispelling the Arcana” worthy of nomination, and my gratitude to editors Sonya Taaffe of The Deadlands and Henri Gendreau of The Roanoke Rambler for giving this works their original homes.

Their second home is pretty spiffy too. Take a look!

It occurred to me to investigate whether I now have enough uncollected stories to assemble a fourth collection and shockingly, the answer is, yes, barely. But I have no such plans just yet. Let’s see what the rest of 2022 brings.

Posted in Aftermath of an Industrial Accident, Awards, Poetry, Short stories, Writing