Writerly recap of December 2018 & January 2019

Belated happy new year, everyone! So far, this year has been busy and sort of scatter-brained, but still good.

(By the way, if you want to receive this bi-monthly recap as a newsletter, you can sign up here.)

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It’s still the season of nominating stories and making recommended reading lists. My awards eligible stories from the past year are here:

My Awards Eligible stories from 2018.

My latest columns at B&N SciFi & Fantasy

My December short fiction roundup.
My January short fiction roundup.
My review of the anthology “A People’s Future of the United States”
I picked a book for this at B&N: The Best New Sci-Fi & Fantasy Books We Read in 2018.
And I picked a book for this at B&N: The New Sci-Fi & Fantasy Books We Can’t Wait to Read in 2019.

Short story roundups & reviews on my blog:

Stories in the wild

My story Hand Me Downs is at GigaNotoSaurus.
My story The Librarian from Cast of Wonders’ Banned Books Week 2018 was a staff pick, and was re-broadcast with some wonderful commentary by narrator Katherine Inskip. Thanks so much to the awesome team at CoW for this honour!
My story “Scent” (originally published in Flash Fiction Online) is available in Curiosities #5 from The Gallery of Curiosities. It’s a gorgeous volume, and all the purchase links are here.
You can order Gorgon: Stories of Emergence from Amazon as an ebook or in paperback. It features an amazing TOC, and includes my story “Bioluminescence”, originally published in Phobos.
If you missed it in December, you can check out my flash fiction story Ten Things I Didn’t Do at Pseudopod.
Also from December: you can check out my story Tunguska, 1987 at Cast of Wonders (originally published in the anthology “Tales from Alternate Earths” from Inklings Press).
Read, or listen to, my new flash fiction story “Catching the Train“, written for R.B. Wood’s Word Count Podcast.

Story sales

My science fiction story “And You Shall Sing to Me a Deeper Song” will appear in a future issue of Interzone. It’s my first story sale to Interzone, and I am so happy and excited about this!
My fantasy story “Stars Above, Shadows Beneath” will be appearing in a new anthology from Inklings Press. It’s great to be working with Inklings Press again. My story “Tunguska, 1987” was published in “Tales from Alternate Earths”, another anthology from Inklings Press, published in 2016.
I announced this sale a while back, but I am going through the suggested edits now, so I’m bringing it up again: my story “The Brightest Lights of Heaven” will be in Fireside Fiction later this year.

Reviews & mentions

My story “It’s Easy to Shoot a Dog” from Beneath Ceaseless Skies made the Locus Reading List! It’s the first time a story of mine has made that list, and I am so proud and happy. I’m in amazing company.
Charles Payseur reviewed my story Hand Me Downs at Quick Sips: “It’s a magical, liberating story of expression and grace and movement, and it makes for a wonderful read!”
Hand Me Downs is also included on The 1000 Year Plan‘s Best Short SFF of January 2019 list:
Hand Me Downs also made the short fiction roundup for January at The Word Burner.
Vanessa Fogg included my story “Ten Things I Didn’t Do” from PseudoPod in her December short fiction roundup.
My story “It’s Easy to Shoot a Dog” is included on E. Catherine Tobler’s list of stories she loved in 2018.
A.C. Wise also included “It’s Easy to Shoot a Dog” on her list of Favorite Short Fiction from 2018.
“It’s Easy to Shoot a Dog” was also mentioned by Eugenia Triantafyllou as one of her favourite stories in 2018.
Marissa Lingen included both “It’s Easy to Shoot a Dog” from Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and my story “The Guitar Hero” from Kaleidotrope on her list of stories she liked in 2018.
Jordan Kurella included my two stories from Beneath Ceaseless Skies, “The Root Cellar” and “It’s Easy to Shoot a Dog”, on her list of favourite fictions of 2018.
Amanda J. McGee includes my story “Mothers, Watch Over Me” from Mythic Delirium in her Best of 2018 list.
The 1000 Year Plan included “It’s Easy to Shoot a Dog” on their Recommended Reading list for 2018.
Huge thanks to Eddie Generous who reviewed my flash fiction collection Dark Flash 3 at Goodreads.
And huge thanks to Maria Savva who also reviewed Dark Flash 3 at Goodreads.
“It’s Easy to Shoot a Dog” was also included on The British Science Fiction Association’s amazing list of recommended short fiction from 2018.

Bits & bobs

My latest flash fiction collection Dark Flash 3, with all the stories I wrote for R.B. Wood’s Word Count Podcast this year, is now available (it’s even available in paperback from Amazon): From Smashwords / Apple iBooks / B&N / Kobo and from Amazon: US / UK / CA / AU / DE / FR / ES / IT / NL / JP / BR / MX / IN
My flash fiction collections Dark Flash and Dark Flash 2 are now available in paperback from Amazon (they were already available as ebooks, of course).
One of the most amazing things that happened in January, was when writer and artist Francesca Forrest made some fantastic artwork, inspired by my story Hand Me Downs in GigaNotoSaurus. You can see it on her Twitter. She also sent me the original artwork, and I am just over-the-moon excited. Such a gorgeous picture of Tilda, from the story, dancing!