Though much of the first seven months of my 2015 was consumed with finishing I Am Providence (long-time readers may remember a late-2014 post in which I announced selling a novel before writing a word of it), I did manage to publish ten pieces of short fiction this year, along with three reprints.
In January, "Χταπόδι Σαλάτα" appeared in the anthology Shadows Over Main Street, which did well for a while until the small press that published it vanished in the typical manner of no longer answering emails from its authors and anthologists. Supposedly, this will be released again some day.
My novelette "We Never Sleep" appeared The Mammoth Book of Dieselpunk in March in the UK, July in the US. Then it was announced that the long-running Mammoth series would be discontinued. In response I put "We Never Sleep" online, because otherwise it would have been "trapped" in an unsupported non-marketed book.
"Black Book of the Skull [Mαύρο βιβλίο του κρανίου]" appeared in the beautiful high-concept anthology The Starry Wisdom Library: The Catalog of the Greatest Occult Book Auction of All Time. The wait was long for this book to appear, but it really is something thanks to editor/bookman Nate Pedersen. Amazingly, neither the book nor the publisher immediately found itself in any sort of danger!
"Anti-Fragile", a 1700-word one-sentence short story appeared in TriggerWarning.US, just after the alt.culture magazine had succeeded in raising tens of thousands of dollars and right before the two principals feuded and had a very public falling-out that continues to this day.
"Yelseesee" was in Gods, Memes, and Monsters: A 21st Century Bestiary, published by Stone Skin Press. This was another high-concept antho, though many of the entries didn't play up the encyclopedia aspect and were just straight fantasy stories.
"Lab Rat", a crime story in dialogue, appeared in the third number of the unfortunately named Lazy Fascist Review. Despite the announcement of a special Lovecraft-themed fourth issue, the magazine was discontinued after the release of this one.
Another crime story, "The Warehouse of Dead Daughters" appeared in the sixteenth issue of the avant-garde magazine Farrago's Wainscot. For my trouble, the story was denounced as not science fiction in its only review.
My occult detective story and Carnacki, the Ghost-Finder, tribute, "The Twentieth Century Man", appeared in the small-press anthology Ghost in the Cogs. It's primarily an ebook and was released on Halloween, rather inexplicably. (Usually, in the US, books are released on Tuesdays.) Haven't seen a hard copy yet, but there is a POD version.
Just last week, an avant-garde piece commissioned by China Miéville, "The Person Who Was Followed Around By Men in Pig Masks: A Play In One Act", was published in the second number of Salvage, a quarterly of revolutionary arts and letters created by former cadre of the International Socialist tendency who left after a horrifying rape scandal a couple of years ago.
And just yesterday, the 79th issue of Apex Magazine went live. It includes my story "The Phylactery", which is in the ebook issue now and will be live on the website by mid-month.
The three reprints were:
"Exit Through the Gift Shop", which was published in Year's Best Weird Fiction, vol. 2,
"Eureka!", which lives again on podcast form in the eighteenth episode of Glittership, and
"Work, Shoot, Hook, Rip", my wrestling noir story, was reprinted in a guest-edited issue of the magazine I co-founded, The Big Click.
I had one book appear under my name this year: the dayjob crime/SF/Japan hybrid anthology Hanzai Japan, co-edited as always by Masumi Washington. It came out on October 20th and has been very well-reviewed so far. In other workplace news, my art direction of the cover of Catherynne Valente's 2013 collection The Melancholy of Mechagirlwon a commendation from Communication Arts.
I only published one original piece of non-fiction, "The Man Who Was In Every Story, or The Murdered Darling", which introduced the re-issue of Gerald Kersh's undeservedly obscure short fiction collection On an Odd Note. "How to Find Freelance Work", a bit of my how-to guide, Starve Better, was reprinted in The Australian Writer's Marketplace 2015. My tribute to the late Tom Piccirilli appeared in the August issue of Locus and as the editorial in the September Big Click.
So, in a way, kind of a lean year. The number of market failures listed above hint at a contraction in short fiction after years of an anthology boom. I am pleased that I've managed to move more into both crime and avant-garde fiction, which was my goal in January 2013 when I announced my "retirement"—you know, one month before Olivia announced her pregnancy and I had to go right back to short SF/F/H to get some money.
But I do have two novels coming out in 2016—the aforementioned Providence in August and on January 5th the trade reissue (with author preferred text!) of my zombie novel The Last Weekend—two stories are to be reprinted in the first three months of the year, a personal essay is to appear in the UK anthology Taut Lines: Extraordinary True Fishing Stories, and we're shopping a strange gift book idea around that has been getting some interesting nibbles, so we shall see what happens.
In January, "Χταπόδι Σαλάτα" appeared in the anthology Shadows Over Main Street, which did well for a while until the small press that published it vanished in the typical manner of no longer answering emails from its authors and anthologists. Supposedly, this will be released again some day.
My novelette "We Never Sleep" appeared The Mammoth Book of Dieselpunk in March in the UK, July in the US. Then it was announced that the long-running Mammoth series would be discontinued. In response I put "We Never Sleep" online, because otherwise it would have been "trapped" in an unsupported non-marketed book.
"Black Book of the Skull [Mαύρο βιβλίο του κρανίου]" appeared in the beautiful high-concept anthology The Starry Wisdom Library: The Catalog of the Greatest Occult Book Auction of All Time. The wait was long for this book to appear, but it really is something thanks to editor/bookman Nate Pedersen. Amazingly, neither the book nor the publisher immediately found itself in any sort of danger!
"Anti-Fragile", a 1700-word one-sentence short story appeared in TriggerWarning.US, just after the alt.culture magazine had succeeded in raising tens of thousands of dollars and right before the two principals feuded and had a very public falling-out that continues to this day.
"Yelseesee" was in Gods, Memes, and Monsters: A 21st Century Bestiary, published by Stone Skin Press. This was another high-concept antho, though many of the entries didn't play up the encyclopedia aspect and were just straight fantasy stories.
"Lab Rat", a crime story in dialogue, appeared in the third number of the unfortunately named Lazy Fascist Review. Despite the announcement of a special Lovecraft-themed fourth issue, the magazine was discontinued after the release of this one.
Another crime story, "The Warehouse of Dead Daughters" appeared in the sixteenth issue of the avant-garde magazine Farrago's Wainscot. For my trouble, the story was denounced as not science fiction in its only review.
My occult detective story and Carnacki, the Ghost-Finder, tribute, "The Twentieth Century Man", appeared in the small-press anthology Ghost in the Cogs. It's primarily an ebook and was released on Halloween, rather inexplicably. (Usually, in the US, books are released on Tuesdays.) Haven't seen a hard copy yet, but there is a POD version.
Just last week, an avant-garde piece commissioned by China Miéville, "The Person Who Was Followed Around By Men in Pig Masks: A Play In One Act", was published in the second number of Salvage, a quarterly of revolutionary arts and letters created by former cadre of the International Socialist tendency who left after a horrifying rape scandal a couple of years ago.
And just yesterday, the 79th issue of Apex Magazine went live. It includes my story "The Phylactery", which is in the ebook issue now and will be live on the website by mid-month.
The three reprints were:
"Exit Through the Gift Shop", which was published in Year's Best Weird Fiction, vol. 2,
"Eureka!", which lives again on podcast form in the eighteenth episode of Glittership, and
"Work, Shoot, Hook, Rip", my wrestling noir story, was reprinted in a guest-edited issue of the magazine I co-founded, The Big Click.
I had one book appear under my name this year: the dayjob crime/SF/Japan hybrid anthology Hanzai Japan, co-edited as always by Masumi Washington. It came out on October 20th and has been very well-reviewed so far. In other workplace news, my art direction of the cover of Catherynne Valente's 2013 collection The Melancholy of Mechagirlwon a commendation from Communication Arts.
I only published one original piece of non-fiction, "The Man Who Was In Every Story, or The Murdered Darling", which introduced the re-issue of Gerald Kersh's undeservedly obscure short fiction collection On an Odd Note. "How to Find Freelance Work", a bit of my how-to guide, Starve Better, was reprinted in The Australian Writer's Marketplace 2015. My tribute to the late Tom Piccirilli appeared in the August issue of Locus and as the editorial in the September Big Click.
So, in a way, kind of a lean year. The number of market failures listed above hint at a contraction in short fiction after years of an anthology boom. I am pleased that I've managed to move more into both crime and avant-garde fiction, which was my goal in January 2013 when I announced my "retirement"—you know, one month before Olivia announced her pregnancy and I had to go right back to short SF/F/H to get some money.
But I do have two novels coming out in 2016—the aforementioned Providence in August and on January 5th the trade reissue (with author preferred text!) of my zombie novel The Last Weekend—two stories are to be reprinted in the first three months of the year, a personal essay is to appear in the UK anthology Taut Lines: Extraordinary True Fishing Stories, and we're shopping a strange gift book idea around that has been getting some interesting nibbles, so we shall see what happens.