2023 is on its way out… that’s really all I can say about that. It hasn’t been the worst year for me, but current events are a LOT, and I wish I had more hope for where they’re headed. I’m filling my life with good stuff as much as I can though, from visiting/talking to my nephews, getting my first yellow belt in a martial art, and doing lots on the personal growth side.

I have two awards eligible stories from this year:

• Novelette: “What the Mountain Takes, What the Journey Offers”, published in Beneath Ceaseless Skies. A baker from a small village must make a dangerous trek to seek the cure for their wife’s fatal illness. They make friends and revelations along the way, lose some things in the process, and discover there may be more room in the world for people like them than they’d once thought.
• Short Story: “What You Are and the Wolf”, published in Lightspeed Magazine. A trans retelling of Red Riding Hood, with a conspiratorial twist.

I created a little graphic to post on the socials, which I’ll include here.

I participated in NaNo seriously for the first time! Life threw me a bunch of wrenches, but I still managed to write 30k+, which I’m proud of given how many things I was juggling! The plan for January is to finish this draft.

Finally, I thought I’d make some recommendations from my reading list this year. By far my favorite author was Nghi Vo. I adore her Singing Hills Cycle novellas, with their traveling monk and sassy bird companion, and her novels Siren Queen and The Chosen and the Beautiful are also lushly written and full of subtle magic.

I happened to have a friend’s copy of Silk & Steel (edited by Janine A. Southard) that I’d been sleeping on, and I am so glad I finally picked it up! Overall, a collection of delightful sapphic tales with swashbuckling heroines and savvy ladies. The theme never got old; there were so many different interpretations, as well as writers adding elements of their own cultures to pull together a collection that goes beyond the Western maiden/knight stereotypes.

Neon Yang does something stunning and unequivocal in The Genesis of Misery. Echoes of Evangelion, Yoon Ha Lee’s Machineries of Empire, and Gideon the Ninth. I eagerly await the next installment…

And that’s it for now, I’m looking forward to spending some time reflecting on 2023 this weekend and deciding where to focus my energy in the weeks to come.