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]