the tortured writer's dept.

Apparently I make one annual post in here now, rounding up everything I published in the calendar year. I was surprised to look back on this year, because it contained a lot more than I remembered—which is perhaps a lesson. Don't sell yourself short, kid. They said fake it till you make it and I did.

In 2024, I made my poetry debut in Nightmare Magazine with "The Let Go." It is about the many ways we change to accommodate love, or the many ways we are made to change. Either way, love transforms us for good or ill. Editor Wendy Wagner was instrumental in this poem's creation, as I first submitted it as a flash story. She wondered how it would work as a poem, which elicited months of agony from me. You know how we writers do.

In recent years, I've been trying to write things I haven't written before—or, that I have written, but have not attempted to publish. "Beauty in the Blight" falls into that category. The anthology call from editor dave ring asked for "depraved" and shocking stories, and so I created this zombie/The Great Gatsby mashup, which should not have worked, but came out okay huh. I wrote a sister story in this universe as well; it is currently on sub.

"Stolen by Moonlight, Betrothed by Sun" was a return to a somewhat classic form—ye olde sword and sorcery tale. Old Moon Quarterly is a gem of a publication. I have two stories on their examples of great sword and sorcery fiction, "The Living, Vengeant Stars" from Swords v. Cthulhu and "And After the Fire, A Still, Small Voice" from Sword & Mythos. One is a dungeon crawler; the other sends Joan of Arc on an adventure with a mammoth. The usual stuff... "Stolen" is narrated by a sword, something I'd wanted to play with but had not until now. Editor Graham Thomas Wilcox was vital to this one—it was a challenge to write and not only because I was still typing with one hand as I did.

"Derail" (Bourbon Penn #34) returns readers to my circus universe. This is August and Nicholas's story; it is about the wild open spaces of Colorado and a cowboy's heart. It is about necessary partings, and how our loved ones continue to exist in memory and deed. I am thankful to have found an editor such as Erik Secker who understood the story as written and did not want to edit my lived experience of dementia.

I returned to Mars in "R Is for Running," in Three-Lobed Burning Eye. This one features a robot dog breaking free from the programming that confines it—in a good way (no psycho killer robot dogs here). Editor Andrew Fuller is always so excited to read new work from me, and I am thankful to appear in 3LBE once again. My dear friend Phoebe Pitassi reads the audio version of this one.

I last appeared in Strange Horizons ten years ago (!). I returned to its pages this year with "To Drive the Cold Winter Away," another story about dementia and loss—another story about what yet remains in the world to find us when we least expect it but most need it. Our heroine closes up her mother's house, but finds something to stay and fight for. Editor Hebe Stanton was a joy to work with, respectful of both the story and its writer's wishes.

To wrap up the year, we have only my second ever holiday story—"Hadley's Hope," in the Santa Rage anthology. I rarely write Christmas stories, but here we are. Editor Jay Hartman was enthusiastic about my work, to say the least, sending me an email that included words like "exquisite," "goddam-effing-holy-crap," which was surprising because as I told him in my cover letter, "this story is not what your guidelines asked for, but here we are." I am pleased he took a chance on me and this story. (And yes, fellow Alien nerds might see something in that title.)

In 2024, I also finished writing a new novel (currently on sub), and freelance edited another novel, Bikini Body by James Strickland, It's book three in a series—I love them all. If you like mysteries and irreverent narrators who were passengers on the Titanic yet alive in modern-day America, these books have you covered. Also: cat hijinks.

I also edited The Deadlands (Issues 33-36), and novellas and novelettes for Psychopomp.

novellas:
A Voice Calling by Christopher Barzak
Lovely Creatures by KT Bryski
From These Dark Abodes by Lyndsie Manusos

novelettes:
What Any Dead Thing Wants by Aimee Ogden
Joanna's Bodies by Eugenia Triantafyllou
We Who Will Not Die, by Shingai Kagunda

So, wow. Don't sell yourself short, kid, You are working your ass off, even if no one sees.

(And yes, I had two reprints published in year end best of books--from Paula Guran (Year's Best Fantasy) and Ellen Datlow (Best Horror of the Year). Honestly still blown away.)