Apologies to all my writer friends

Credit: Carole Raddato

I have started seeing all the recommendations for the various writing awards — Hugos, Nebulas, etc. — going up on various social media, and I’ve realized that I have not kept the list I promised myself I would of the stories I read this year. Which means that I haven’t put together a list of recommendations — and since I’ve got a particularly busy December ahead of me, will probably not get around to it, no matter how much I may promise myself I will.

Possibly that was due to a rather enervating sense of discouragement I’ve been feeling lately. I won’t go into the reasons — some of it is simply personal family business, but others just feel to me like sour grapes, and so not worthy of expressing in public. This year, for example, I don’t really have any stories of my own that I could possibly recommend; the only ones that were published was a flash fiction piece and a reprint that appeared in an independent anthology. (However, I will say that the latter publication, Hell Hath Only Fury, is a charity anthology whose profits will go to The Brigid Alliance, an organization that helps people who need abortion care; the book contains some excellent and angry original fiction.)

At any rate, I shouldn’t complain. I do have three stories that will, at some point, be coming out in publications that I have huge respect for: Kaleidotrope, Cosmic Roots and Eldritch Shores, and Fantasy & Science Fiction. And I’m working on both a short story and, fates willing, a novel — assuming I have time to finish either.

Meanwhile, though, I beg the pardon of all the very worthy and exciting writers whose stories deserve to be touted for the various awards. But I can at least recommend checking out AC Wise’s Eligibility and Recommendation Links Roundup 2022, which is a great place to find tales to recommend — or even just to read.

My official 2020 eligibility post

I’m beginning to see eligibility posts popping up on Twitter — posts listing the books and stories and poetry that people have had published over 2020, in order to remind their friends, readers, and acquaintances that awards season is nigh. So this is mine:

I’ve got two eligible stories this year:

“Dead Time on Hart Island,” published in Space & Time #138 in September.
A convict working on burial detail finds he has more in common with the dead than the living.This is not available without purchase (although it is certainly worth it; other writers in the issue include Kate Ellis, Gordon Linzner, and Daniel M. Kimmel). SFWA members can find a copy at the SFWA forum.

“Slow Fade,” published in Legendary Tales #1 in October.
A woman gradually becomes lost within her life. It is available online here.

Some Award Recommendations

I’d feel selfish if I didn’t recommend some of the great books and stories I’ve read over the past year. I do want to apologize in advance to anyone who is not mentioned here; I have not kept the list of what I read that I promised myself I would (and I’ve done a lot of backreading of novels I’ve meant to get to last year and hadn’t), and as a result, there are probably lots of works that are missing. And because I haven’t had time to do all the reading I wanted to, there are also probably lots of stories and novels that I shoulda/coulda read that I haven’t. With any luck, I’ll do better next year.

I’ve put in the categorizations for the Nebulas, but these are general recommendations. In no particular order:

Norton Award

Sal and Gabi Break the Universe by Carlos Hernandez

Novels / Collections

…And Other Disasters by Malka Older

Desdemona and The Deep by C.S.E. Cooney

Snow White Learns Witchcraft by Theodora Goss

The City in the Middle of the Night by Charlie Jane Anders

Novella

Catfish Lullaby by AC Wise

Novelette

His Footsteps, Through Darkness and Light by Mimi Mondal (check out that great illustration as well)

Bird Thou Never Wert by James Morrow (SFWA members-only link)

The Blur in the Corner of Your Eye by Sarah Pinsker

Short stories

Sin Embargo 2019 by Sabrina Vourvoulias (another great illustration)

A Catalog of Storms by Fran Wilde

The Brightest Lights of Heaven by Maria Haskins

Crossing the Line by Lawrence M. Schoen (SFWA members-only link)

How the Trick is Done by A. C. Wise

The Angles by A.T. Sayre

 

 

 

Yes, I’ve written an awards eligibility post as well. So sue me.

Here’s the thing: I’m one of those ridiculously shy writers who (a) know that they need to promote their work so that people will read it, and (b) don’t want to promote their work because, well, it’s just, you know, not polite. Or called for. Or something.

However, on the other hand, I’m sorta proud of my first real, name-on-the-cover book, The History of Soul 2065, which appeared this year, and so I thought I’d write an awards eligibility post along with all the other writers (many of whom I admire greatly) who are writing theirs.

So here it goes. One book and a short story. (And I promise that the next blog post will be about a few of the books and/or stories I enjoyed this year…)

The History of Soul 2065

My mosaic novel, which was published in June by Mythic Delirium Books, tells the history of two Jewish families, starting with two young girls who meet in a magical glade in 1914 and become friends. They swear to meet again, and while war and circumstances prevent that from happened, the promise travels down the generations though their families. Each story is intertwined with the others; you meet some characters at different times in their lives; others are featured in some stories and in the background of others. I was honored to get an introduction by Jane Yolen, and blurbs by Samuel R. Delany, Jeffrey Ford, C.S.E. Cooney, Carlos Hernandez, Richard Bowes, and James Morrow, who described it this way:

“Like all good mosaic novels, The History of Soul 2065 rewards its readers with both a beguiling narrative arc and a succession of individually riveting stories—in this case, twenty cannily uncanny tales involving ghosts, gods, demons, dybbuks, magic jewels, and time-bending birds.” 

If you are a SFWA member, you can find a copy here.  If you’d like to buy a copy, you can find links to various sources here.

“Blaming Caine” from Lost Signals of the Terran Empire

This was an interesting challenge for me. Chuck Gannon has created a fascinating science fictional universe, well-populated with aliens and spies and adventurers.. But while I enjoying reading his works, they are not the kind of story I would usually try to write. So when Chuck asked me if I wanted to try to write a story for an anthology he was putting together, I decided I’d give it a try. I’d never written in somebody else’s universe before, and it was a real challenge — in other words, it was really hard — but I was ultimately glad I took it on.

“Blaming Caine” is about a young woman whose parents are lost in one of those disasters that are rife in science fictional tales. Ships blow up, whole worlds are destroyed — and Our Heroes continue on their tale, leaving behind hundreds and thousands of lost and grieving people whose stories are not considered important enough to be told. I decided to try to tell the story of one of them.

If you are a SFWA member, you can find a copy here.  If you’d like to buy a copy, you can find links to various sources here.