収束ゾーンでのライフ: Life in the Convergence Zone

I'll be doing my usual recommendations for short stuff other people have read at the end of December, when I've had a chance to read the things that are still coming out in December, but I think I've seen the last of my new publications for the year, so here's what I've been up to!

...a year turns out to be a long time. One of the reasons I think it's good to do these year-in-review posts is that the sense of "oh wait, was that this same year???" is strong. I feel like my tendency to put things I've accomplished in the rearview and focus on the next thing is generally really useful to me, but it does tend to lead to a "what have you done lately" mindset. When it turns out that what I have done lately is a pile of stories. There were more SF than fantasy stories, which surprised me, it didn't feel that way...more on why I think that is in a minute. In any case, here's the 2025 story list:

The Year the Sheep God Shattered (Diabolical Plots)

Her Tune, In Truth (Sunday Morning Transport)

If the Weather Holds (Analog)

Disconnections (Nature Futures)

The Things You Know, The Things You Trust (If There's Anyone Left)

All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt (Lightspeed)

Things I Miss About Civilization (Nature Futures)

A Shaky Bridge (Clarkesworld)

What a Big Heart You Have (Kaleidotrope)

And Every Galatea Shaped Anew (Analog)

The Crow's Second Tale (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)

Advice for Wormhole Travelers (The Vertigo Project)

She Wavers But She Does Not Weaken (The Vertigo Project)

The Torn Map (The Vertigo Project)

So yeah! Stories galore! And with a very satisfying variety of publishers, with the exception that The Vertigo Project was a focus of a lot of my attention this year. Which makes sense! It's a pretty big deal. All the poetry I had published this year was with The Vertigo Project as well, although I have a couple of poems ready to come out in 2026 from other places. Here's the list of poems:

Club Planet Vertigo (The Vertigo Project)

Greetings From Innerspace (The Vertigo Project)

On the Way Down (The Vertigo Project)

Preparation (The Vertigo Project)

The Nature of Nemesis (The Vertigo Project)

I only had one piece of nonfiction out this year, The Stranger Next Door: The Domestic Fantastic in Classic Nordic Children's Literature (Uncanny). But it's a topic that's very close to my heart, and I'm glad I had the chance to wallow in it. Er, I mean, share it with you.

I suppose the other thing that could be considered nonfiction is that I wrote journaling prompts to help people with vertigo process their vertigo experience through creative writing. I also wrote a group workshop format for the same general ideas, and I ran the first of those workshops in November. It was lovely and seemed to be very meaningful to the people involved--and that's one of the things that's nice about the facilitator (that is, me) being someone with vertigo, it meant that I was talking about our experiences rather than their experiences. The Vertigo Project has been the gift that keeps on giving all year, and there will be more of it yet in 2026. What a great thing to get to be involved with. I'm so pleased to have done this work with these people.

I was also a finalist for the Washington Science Fiction Association's Small Press Award, for one of 2024's stories, A Pilgrimage to the God of High Places. I got to go to Capclave and hang out with a bunch of friends and enjoy being a finalist.

I think the main reason that I felt like I was doing equal parts fantasy and SF this year is that I wrote approximately half each of two novels, one fantasy and one SF. Both are still going strong. We'll see where they take me. I'm also working on some more short work in both categories. While I published a lot more short SF, my biggest news in recent months is that I sold a fantasy novella to Horned Lark Press. A Dubious Clamor features harpies, politics, operettas, pastries, and complicated friendships, and it's forthcoming in 2026. A lot done this year, a lot to look forward to!