It’s that time again, and all the cool kids are doing it. If any of these stories strike your fancy, I’d be honoured to the max if you considered them in your award ballots, if you’re filling out any award ballots this year. They’re all eligible exclusively as short stories.

“A Billion Miles From What Was Home”

This is my “after Las Vegas is inevitably swallowed by the desert sands” story, which I’d been tinkering with in one form or another since Clarion West in 2019. It unfortunately doesn’t appear anywhere online, so the easiest way to get it may be from Amazon.

“All the Things I Could’ve Done That Wouldn’t Have Been So Devastating”

I find something appropriate about the shortest story I’ve ever published having the longest title out of any of them. It’s also my only free-to-read story of 2023, appearing here at Baffling Magazine, and is my only giant queer lady story of 2023 as well. Don’t worry, though. There are more coming.

“And Prison On My Back”

When the editors of Luminescent Machinations called, who was I to say no, especially since I was already working towards a piece for submission anyway? This is my Trans Feels story of the year, and was shaped by a) being the first thing I wrote after I got punched in the face by covid, and 2) me racing to finish it before the Russo-Ukrainian War started, because in early February it was clear something was going to happen and I wanted this done without that extra stress. (I finished on February 16th, so just under the wire.)

“To Keep the Way”

Here’s another story written in a rush; I’d written something entirely different for the Rosalind’s Siblings anthology, and when that lost steam I ultimately sold that story to another market — and a week later, I learned that Rosalind’s Siblings was happening again. The title comes from Genesis by way of the Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri intro, which has had a place in my head for a long, long time now.

I’m realizing now that I didn’t post one of these here last year, and that was the year one of my stories actually won an award. Funny how things work in the midst of a devastating plague, isn’t it?

But 2023’s been going for two weeks, so I think I’m finally safe to do my award eligibility post for 2022, since there will be nothing else coming out in that departed 2022 for the remaining lifetime of the universe! (Other 2022s, sure. But not the one we just had.) It was a quiet year for me – which is putting it mildly. But I published two things!

• “A Sword Has One Purpose” – This was my second appearance in Lightspeed, and my first story dedicated to the importance of punching fascists in their awful, awful faces. It definitely will not be the last of the second category, because as the Second World War drifts further from living memory it becomes more evident that some fuckers need to be reminded again and again before they get the fucking lesson.
• “Shards of Nightmares” – This was my first foray into work-for-hire writing for an existing intellectual property, and was written as part of Magic: The Gathering‘s Dominaria United block. As someone who started playing Magic in 1995 and still has a few cards from that time kicking around, it was a rad experience. Even radder, of course, was the money.

I’ve got more stories coming up in 2023, including at least one that still hasn’t been formally announced, and as always there are more looking for homes. Maybe they’ll end up here in future posts!

Enough has already been said about this year, so I won’t — except to say that this is not the kind of year I would’ve expected to be my most productive thus far. Funny how things work, isn’t it? I released seven short stories and one interactive fiction game this year, and if you’re considering possibilities for awards in the new year, give them a look!

• “The Last Ship Out of Exville” | Kaleidotrope, Winter 2020
  A space station populated by misfits prepares one final show before fascists take over. (Short story – 1,388 words)
  Recommended by Karen Burnham in Locus, June 2020
• “Purplefall” | Broadcasts from the Wasteland, April 2020
  After the death of her father, a grieving woman seeks answers from the gods. (Audio short story – 9 minutes, 45 seconds)
• “A Compass in the Dark” | Analog, May/June 2020
  A woman discovers how easy it is for lunar spirits to lose their way. (Short story – 2,150 words)
  Reviewed in Rocket Stack Rank
• “The Forests Here Are Always Dark” | GlitterShip, Spring 2020
  On a world divided between eternal day and night, a trans woman struggles to ensure people see her as she is. (Short story – 5,356 words)
  Reviewed in Quick Sip Reviews
• “The Dreadnought and the Stars” | Glitter + Ashes, Neon Hemlock, 2020
  Long after the end of the world, a giant lesbian wanders the remnants, looking for her love. (Short story – 5,656 words)
  Reviewed in Quick Sip Reviews
• “A Brilliant Light, An Unreachable Dawn” | Recognize Fascism, World Weaver Press, 2020
  A traveller returns home to find that they both have changed, and that she doesn’t fit inside its walls anymore. (Short story – 4,488 words)
• “Little Rituals” | Heavy Metal Jupiters and Other Places, NASA Exoplanet Science Institute, 2020
  Two space travellers share a quiet moment on a planet doomed to be engulfed by its sun. (Short story – 536 words)
• “The Luminous Underground” | Choice of Games, 2020
  Strange things are going down in the Underground! Build your team, descend beneath the city streets, and face down daemons with magic and science in this 660,000-word work of interactive fiction!

The other members of the Clarion West Class of 2019 have been busy this year, too – consider checking out everything they have up for consideration, too!

It’s been a busy year for me, even though it might not look that way in the context of posts here. Between attending Clarion West, continuing work on my interactive fiction game The Tunnel Crew, and juggling a writer’s life with all the other grumbles of living, I’ve managed to release a couple of stories. I’d be honoured and thrilled if you considered them for whatever awards you might be submitting nominations for!

• “Midway on the Waves” (8,200 words – Novelette) – originally in Analog, May/June 2019
  Twenty-five years after Titan won its independence, a woman who witnessed a city shattered is still trying to come to grips with her trauma in the shards of her world. Here, I wrestled with how a bolt from the blue can transform your world forever in ways that take a lifetime to unfold.
• “A Square of Flesh, A Cube of Steel” (5,500 words – Short Story) – originally in Analog, September/October 2019
  On a cold, small moon inhabited by giant women, a young trans woman grapples with the possibility of losing her girlfriend along with everything and everyone she knows when a starship arrives to take her back to Mars. This is a story of isolation, self-determination, and giant queer ladies, and I’m so happy to see the response it’s already received.

I admit, it’s been a slight year for me – but I’ve got high hopes for 2020, in a lot of respects.

One of the things that’s irritated for a while is how much science fiction loves empires. I mean, looooooooves them. Sure, they’re frequently portrayed as the villain, but portrayal is only half of the equation. So I wrote a non-fiction article about this, “A Vaccine for the Virus of Empire?” and it’s now live on the Future Science Fiction Digest website, right here! Check it out!

It’s been a quiet month for me, creatively speaking, but if you’re interested in more details about me and how I identify, I’ve just had an interview go live at Asexual Artists. I do identify as being on the asexual spectrum, and this interview is full of pretty frank statements that I’ve never said publicly before.

If you’re interested, check it out on WordPress or Tumblr!

If you’re interested in reading more of my work but have seen my bibliography page, you’ve probably realized that one big hurdle between here and there is that the vast majority of my work isn’t available online. That’s starting to change now, thanks to Curious Fictions — a website set up to support authors in my situation, where reprints can be posted and readers like you can read them and even subscribe to authors you especially like.

So far, I have three long-since-unseen stories available for reading there: A Violent Wind, First of the North, and Three Years of Ashes and Twenty Years of Dust. Curious Fictions’ interface provides an estimated reading time, as well, so if you’ve got the time, consider checking them out!

Thanks for the visit – I appreciate it! In the future, this will be where you can find timely announcements of what I’m up to. For now, here’s a seven-year-old photo of the Pacific Ocean at San Francisco, because I think it looks nice. All that water, all that sky.