2024: This Year in Writing

[mrissa]

 

Honestly I'm so happy with the writing I've been doing this year.

Isn't that a great thing to be able to say? And particularly isn't that a great thing to be able to say in the face of a year that is otherwise a bit fraught? But for most of the year the work has been there for me, it's been energizing rather than draining, it's been stuff I'm really proud of, doing things that I really wanted to do. Picking up themes that I already loved and some that I haven't addressed in fiction in quite these ways. Playing with form. Doing the thing. Hurrah for the work, when the rest of the world is on fire.

There are three poems, an essay, and eleven short fiction pieces to read here. I hope you enjoy them all, but honestly I hope you enjoy even one of them, that's great, that's all a lot of us get. I have several pieces in the publishing pipeline for next year (some of them quite early next year), and also some additional career stuff that's good and weird. And that's what we like around here, we like good and weird. We like being able to say, "really, wow, I...did not see that coming." Stay tuned, you won't see it coming, but it's fun when it gets here. Until then, the 2024 list:

Lost on a World Tree (poem), Not One of Us Issue 77 (January 2024)

Islands of Stability, Lightspeed, March 2024

Mistletoe Theodicy (poem), Not One of Us Issue 78 (April 2024)

A Pilgrimage to the God of High Places, Beneath Ceaseless Skies (May 2024)

And the Dreams That You Dare to Dream, Lightspeed, May 2024

Conjured from the Rubble, Haven Spec, July 2024

Book Clubs With My Imaginary Friends (essay), Uncanny, Issue 59 (Jul/Aug 2024)

Panthalassa (poem), Analog, Jul/Aug 2024

Denebian Glamour's What's Hot and What's Not for the Next Millennium, Nature Futures, August 2024

The Music Must Always Play, Clarkesworld, September 2024

The Wrong Time Travel Story, Uncanny, Issue 60 (Sep/Oct 2024)

Transits of Other Lands, Kaleidotrope, Autumn 2024 (October 2024)

Three Drops in the River, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, October 2024

On the Water Its Crystal Teeth, Uncanny, Issue 61 (Nov/Dec 2024)

Betsy Donnelly's Forty-Third Chance, Nature Futures, December 2024

Comments

[sartorias]

Thank you--bookmarking! Some I've read and enjoyed, others are new.

And yes, it's all the more precious when the work is there in spite of real life's deluges and nuclear dumpster fires. And a single response can mean so much.

Here's to good and weird!

[mrissa]

Thank you!

[sonia]

"On the Water Its Crystal Teeth" made me cry (in a good way). Thank you for the "Fuck you!" moment, and the ending.

[mrissa]

Thank you for appreciating it so well!

[pameladean]

It is a stupendous list and I loved revisiting the ones I'd read.

I kept thinking, of the ones I've read already, "Wait, that was just this year? Only last summer?" Yikes.

I really need to just set up an account with Nature. But it tasks me! It tasks me! Not in any way your doing or problem. Just a very minor example of Blargh.

P.

[mrissa]

This is why I have a list of other people's short stuff I've liked, and why I use my library spreadsheet if someone asks for "science fiction from the last five years" or something else like that: because time is a slippery jerk.

[gwynnega]

Hurrah for the work, when the rest of the world is on fire.

Amen to that! I've read and enjoyed a number of these publications, and I want to check out the ones I've missed.