2018 was a record year for me in terms of creative output. I had 4 short fiction pieces, 7 poems, and 1 novel come out. Not bad following the drought I experienced last year! Below you will find all my eligible work, as well as some of my favorite fiction written by other authors this year.
My Eligible Work
Best Short Story
The following short stories are eligible for the “Best Short Story” category of the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards. I am also in my second (and final) year of being eligible for the John C. Campbell Award for Best New Writer.
“The Six Raptor-Wives of the Utah Rangelands” – Robot Dinosaurs, June 2018
Evelyn had just started back up the stairs when the garage lights suddenly sprang on, the motion sensor triggered by six heads, not three, swiveling toward her. The mouths of the raptors gaped, as if they’d just been caught in secret conference. It would have been comical, if not for the serrated rows of teeth in those mouths, and the uncanny look of understanding in the raptors’ toy-style gazes.
“When the Tides Bring You Back” – Factor Four Magazine, Issue 2, June 2018
If I knew their names, I would sing to them of my little island home in the sea. I would sing until the inside of my throat began to peel like the skin of a grapefruit, until my words became one long screech, the kind that wakes you from a terrible dream. When their thoughts finally began to circle on themselves, telling them to come, come closer, come now, HURRY, and they finally obeyed, even then I would cover the sound of their screams with my voice.
But I did not know their names.
I did not know the names of the men who stole my sister from me, capturing her in the middle of the night while the rest of the nest slept.
“Untimely Frost, Unlikely Bloom” – Flash Fiction Online, July 2018
The first is a boy of only twelve summers. He smells like rotting fruit, his shirt bruised with blood and bile, and I know from the look in his eyes he intends to kill me. I put an end to his suffering as quickly as I can. A mercy, I tell myself.
Afterward, I smooth over the earth where he dragged the ax behind him, too weak to carry it.
I hope others will not follow.
“A Subtle Fire Beneath the Skin” – Sword & Sonnet: An Anthology of Battle Poets, September 2018
The wall opens. It’s been so long since anyone visited that Gennesee cannot recall the word for door; it’s only the wall scraping off its body, taking apart the darkness with barely-recalled light.
Her chains rake the dusty floor as she crawls forward, muscles too atrophied to hold up her spine. Any sense of decorum has left her. She’s close enough that the fresh blast of air goes down her throat like lake water, fleshy and cold, no different from the fingers of the chief archivist after she swallowed a page of his personal musings. A single page probably wouldn’t have been enough for her to digest the shape of his mind, letting her pull the words she needed to command her release, but she’d had to try something.
That was more than two years ago.
Best Novel
I had one new novel release in 2018: Make Me No Grave, a weird western described by one reviewer as “Red Dead Redemption meets Wynonna Earp.” It is eligible for the “Best Novel” category of the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards.
Read chapters 1-3 here
Marshal Apostle Richardson faces off against bloodthirsty outlaws, flesh witches, ruthless vigilantes, and more in this gritty, magical re-imagining of the Old West.
Almena Guillory, better known as the Grizzly Queen of the West, has done plenty to warrant the noose, but U.S. Marshal Apostle Richardson enforces the law, he doesn’t decide it. When a posse tries to lynch Almena ahead of her trial, Apostle refuses their form of expedited justice—and receives a bullet for his trouble. Almena spares him through the use of dangerous flesh magic but escapes soon after saving him.
Weeks later, Apostle fears the outlaw queen has returned to her old ways when she’s spotted terrorizing Kansas with a new gang in tow. When cornered, however, Almena makes a convincing case for her innocence and proposes a plan to take the real bandits down.
Working with a known killer opens Apostle up to all sorts of trouble, not the least being his own growing attraction toward the roguish woman. Turning Almena away from vengeance may be out of the question, but if he doesn’t try, she’ll wind up right where the law wants her: at the end of a rope.
And if Apostle isn’t careful, he’ll end up joining her.
2019 Rhysling Award for Best Poem
The following poems are eligible for the “Best Short Poem” category of the Rhysling Award, and are likely eligible for other speculative poetry awards for poems published in 2018.
“Petrified” – New Myths Magazine, March 2018
You’re tired of plucking bloody girls
off bloody floors, your temples desecrated
by muffled
cries…
“Lament from the Ruin Mounds” – Eternal Haunted Summer, Summer Solstice Issue 2018
I. SKY
Her garments removed,
the queen of heaven descends
beckoned by the dark…
“Black Swan” – Liminality, June 2018
Blame the witch, the brew—
blame the moon, its reflection shivering
on the cold skillet of the lake…
“Daphne’s Grove” – The Future Fire, July 2018
It is, like everything
a process. Some never learn
how to go back
to flesh, to blood, trapped
in their own bony
undergrowth…
“What Big Teeth” – Star*Line, August 2018
You always assume
I’m the girl
because you’ve never seen a woman
in red who wasn’t painted
into a bikini
or thong
you could remove
with your teeth…
“Apostasy” – Wild Musette, October 2018
It’s only once you’re gone that I begin
to appreciate the long tradition of suffering
amongst the gods…
“Results of Your Quiz: Which Survivor of the Trojan War Are You?” – The Future Fire, November 2018
In your bed, instead of a girl
they will find the impression
of a girl, your sheets soaked
in sweat, a body-sized bruise
left in the linens…
And lastly, I’d like to take a moment to give a shout-out to some of my favorite fiction this year, published by other authors. By no means is this a complete list, and I wish I’d had a chance to read more! 2018 was packed with incredible short fiction.
FLASH FICTION
- “A Place You Can See the Stars” by Cathy Ulrich (Easy Street)
- “Five Functions of Your Bionosaur” by Rachael K. Jones (Robot Dinosaurs)
- “Knots” by Filip Wiltgren (DSF)
- “STET” by Sarah Gailey (Fireside)
SHORT STORIES
- “Dust to Dust” by Mary Robinette Kowal (Fireside)
- “Flow” by Marissa Lingen (Fireside)
- “Humans Die, Stars Fade” by Charles Payseur (Escape Pod)
- “Irregularity” by Rachel Harrison (Apex)
- “One Day, My Dear, I’ll Shower You With Rubies” by Langley Hyde (Podcastle)
- “The Girl Who Ate Galaxies” by L’Erin Ogle (Syntax & Salt)
NOVELS
- An Enchantment of Ravens by Margaret Rogerson
- Circe by Madeleine Miller
- The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal
- The Land of Yesterday by K. A. Reynolds
Congratulations on your Year of Successes!
May God continue to cause them to abound.