2020 publications

Here is my year in review for 2020 stories and poems. I don't usually make a big effort trying to garner interest in nominating things for awards, though I probably should. But mostly I want everyone to have a chance to give these stories and poems a read:

• "Carnival Days and Days" in Daily Science Fiction (flash fiction), a story of stopped air travel and clowns and terror.
• "The Library of Whispers" in Polu Texni (poem), a poem of architecture and sound waves and whimsy
• "The Flying City" in Liminality (poem), a people look at their doomed flight and decay
• "Heroes Never Die" in Frozen Wavelets (flash fiction), so many people tell tales of their heroes of old who will come back to rescue them, but the promise may not be all they think it is
• "Body Double for the Oldest Organism" in Star*Line 43.3 (poem), to protect the oldest known organism in the universe, a false one takes its place
• "Assailing the Garden of Pleasure" in Heroic Fantasy Quarterly (short story), a cruel master, the adepts who pay the price, and the struggle to unite them against his magic
• "The Huntress and the Conveyor Worlds" in Mythaxis (short story), a scavenger desperate to find something worth dragging across strange worlds for a reward
• "Six Views of the Wall" in Dear Leader Tales (short story), a short-sighted leader obsesses over the crumbling wall he insists on building
• "The Bridge Fugue: Variations on Emptiness" in Daily Science Fiction (flash fiction), a bridge with one end fixed and the other variable, a person trying over and over to find a connection across it

Three short stories, three flash fictions, and three poems. Doesn't get more balanced than that.

This also means my 2020 publications began in January in DSF with a story about travel interruptions and ended in December in DSF with a story about loneliness and someone desperate to reach out and make some kind of connection. Make of that what you will... But both stories were written (and the first published) pre-lockdowns, for the record.

And not exactly fitting above, but worth pointing out in this 2020 overview:

• Three-Lobed Burning Eye has reprinted my story "Scolyard's 'The Constructs Foresee Their Doom'" along with the stories of three full online issues in a limited edition print version, Volume VI. It even includes an illustration for my story.
• Since July I've been posting episodes of a serialized story, "The Market of Magical Goods," each episode exactly 100 words (according to my word processor count), each one detailing a quirk or character or event of the magical, whimsical marketplace.

Happy reading, happy holidays, and here's to more great stories and poems in the year to come!