back to december

It is no stretch to say that 2025 has been the worst year of my life. Whatever else happened, or didn’t happen, my mother passed away, and that has clouded everything. I was her caregiver for more than ten years, and as much as that work suffocated me, I am adrift without it. I do not know how to live yet.

2025 marked another year of novel rejections, where editors love my writing and lavish it with praise, and say the novel on offer is not for them. There is nowhere my novel-length work fits.

These two facts have conspired to eat my writing brain, and I’ve produced the least amount of short fiction in the past twenty-five years of writing. I regained my ability to type with two hands after hand surgery, but no one wants what little I’m producing.

Psychopomp also reduced an restructured its publishing scope at the end of 2025, which means I am losing income, with the closing of print novellas and Fantasy Magazine.

What did I manage to do this year? I had hand surgery. I saw Mary Robinette Kowal on her book tour. I started a new PT cycle. I took a workshop focused on David Lynch’s films and his writing. I lost my mom. I saw Wendy N. Wagner on her book tour. I finished my infusions. I ended the new PT cycle. I started grief counseling. I saw Fran Wilde on her book tour. I got another COVID vaccine. I saw Mary Robinette Kowal and Sam J. Miller on their book tour. I carried my mom’s ashes across the Pacific and, with the help of friends, laid her to rest. I returned to a very empty house. I will resume therapy.

I edited issues 37, 38, and 39 of The Deadlands. (Vajra Chandrasekera guest edited the fiction in issue #40 if you are inclined to nominate him.)

I edited the novella Starstruck, by Aimee Ogden, and the novella Summer In the House Of the Departed by Josh Rountree, both published by Psychopomp. I edited One Message Remains, a collection by Premee Mohamed.

I edited the novelette “UPDATE: The Buildings Are Hungry and the Plague Can Speak” by Natalia Theodoridou, and the novelette “The Garden of the Bloodpotter” by Erin Brown, both published by Psychopomp.

My short story “First, Last, Oldest, True,” appeared in Sunday Morning Transport.

My short story “Nacre” appeared in Three-Lobed Burning Eye.

My non-fiction essay, “Do Good Work,” appeared at Ruadán Books.

And that was 2025.