2010: A Year of Writing, Writing, Writing (and Teaching!)
So, teaching is well and truly finished and now it’s my last day at the Research Centre until next year. The summer looms before me (theoretically; I mean, how cold is it?!? It’s the solstice and I’m wearing my winter clothes, and we actually turned the heater back on last night to take the chill off the house! But I digress…) Summer looms: two months for me to finish the thesis (at last!!) and do a spit-polish on Bluegrass Symphony. Sure, I’ll be flat broke, what with the no job and all, but I’ll have something more precious than a full bank account… Time to slip into my oubliette and write.
And since the amount of work I’ve got to do over the coming weeks will probably preclude me updating this website as frequently as I’d like, I thought I’d take a minute to look back on 2010: The Year of Writing, Interrupted by Frequent Bouts of Teaching.
Obviously, I’m most excited about selling two collections this year (!!!!!) to Ticonderoga Publications. Bluegrass Symphony is coming out next year (with an intro by the dynamic VanderMeer duo! Be still my heart…) and Midnight and Moonshine is schedule for 2012 — which is super exciting, since I’ll be co-writing it with the other half of my Brain, aka Angela Slatter!
But I’m also pretty chuffed about what a crazy short story year I’ve had. All of these sold and/or were published since January:
- ‘Gutted’, Shimmer, Forthcoming (2011) — and I get to do an audio version for this story! Fun!
- ‘Unlocking the God’, Electric Velocipede, November 2010
- ‘Sisters Under the Skin’, Weird Tales, ‘Uncanny Issue’ 356, Summer 2010
- ‘Their Own Executioners’, ChiZine, July-September 2010
- ‘Tiny Drops’, Midnight Echo, Issue 4, 2010.
- ‘White and Red in the Black’, Dead Red Heart, ed. Russell B. Farr (Ticonderoga Publications) Forthcoming 2011
- ‘Singing Breath into the Dead’, Music for Another World, ed. Mark Harding (Mutation Press), 2010
- ‘Soil From My Fingers’, Tesseracts 14, ed. Brett Alexander Savory & John Robert Colombo (ChiZine Press), 2010
- ‘Weightless’, Sprawl, ed. Alisa Krasnostein (Twelfth Planet Press), 2010
- ‘The Curious Case of Physically-Manifested Bedsheet Mania & Other Tales’, co-written with Angela Slatter, Steampunk Reloaded , ed. Ann & Jeff VanderMeer (Tachyon Press), 2010
- ‘The February Dragon’, co-written with Angela Slatter, Scary Kisses, ed. Liz Grzyb (Ticonderoga Publications), 2010
I don’t think I can articulate how lucky I feel to have worked with all of these fabulous editors this year — I can only hope that my future stories reflect how much I’ve learned from them.
Other highlights of 2010:
- My first Worldcon!! So glad it was in Melbourne, so glad to have met so many of my amazing Facebook friends in person, so glad I got the opportunity to be on and attend some fantastic panels.
- Designing the cover for Angela Slatter’s The Girl With No Hands collection…
- …then seeing it AND her beautiful Sourdough collection appear on Ellen Datlow’s “Christmas List”!!!
- Going to Canada for the event of the (North American) summer: my mom’s wedding to my wonderful stepdad!
- Surviving the heaviest teaching load I have ever had (8 classes; about 175 students; over 600 assignments marked!!)…
- …and then getting an award for excellence in Humanities teaching
- Being selected for the Academic Internship at my university, which was basically a year-long “let us help you achieve academic status” program
- And, finally, coming so close to the end of my PhD I can taste it!
[Edit to add: I can't believe I forgot to mention that this year I also became an Australian citizen! Sheesh. Another absolute highlight, despite this oversight...!!!]
Phew!
Happy holidays, everyone. Hope your summers are warm or your winters cozy. See you in 2011 (or on Facebook!)
[Cue the oubliette]
Steampunk II!
Totally worth walking 45 minutes to/from the post office in 32 degree heat — my contributor’s copies are here! Woo hoo!
Links of great news
Over at the New York Review of Books’ website, Samantha Holloway offers a detailed introduction and review of the soon-to-be-released Steampunk II: Steampunk Reloaded anthology. I think it’d be hard to find a more enthusiastic or positive report on the fantastic work Ann & Jeff VanderMeer have done on editing this anthology, and I for one cannot wait until my copies arrive!
BTW, feel free to read the above statement as a challenge — I’d be more than happy to see people trying to outdo each other in an ‘I heart Steampunk Reloaded‘ competition…
…and click here to read the squee-worthy review.
Also worthy of a hearty squee is the news that Tansy Rayner Roberts’ story ‘Siren Beat’ (published by Twelfth Planet Press) has just won the Washington SF Small Press Short Fiction Award – including shiny new trophy!
Read Tansy’s acceptance speech (and drop her a well-earned congrats) here.
Finally, the interwebs are beginning to buzz about Mark Harding’s Music for Another World anthology, in which my story ‘Singing Breath into the Dead’ appears. You can read a lovely review of the antho here, and/or head on over to the Mutation Press website to see clips of some of the stories being read, and to nab yourself a copy.
Steampunk Reloaded
Angela Slatter and I have collaborated on a couple of short pieces for Jeff and Ann VanderMeer’s Steampunk Reloaded, including “Notes & Queries: The Curious Case of Physically-Manifested ‘Bed-Sheet Mania’” with related interrogatories on “The Prisoner Queen,” “The Great Air Ferry Disaster,” and "Oyster Rime Spores", and including correspondence related to the Mecha-Ostrich’s inquiries.
Take a quick gander at the names on this cover, and you’ll get an inkling of how excited we are to be a part of this project! You can read all about the anthology (including full ToC) on Jeff VanderMeer’s blog.
Yay!!! 
