Man, I am bad at updating this website. I mean, I have low expectations of myself, but even then I am limboing under them like a champ.

Anyway. In brief, for posterity:

I usually have complicated feelings about awards season, but they're much easier this year:

I didn't have anything published this year. Nothing. Not a thing.

That's the first year since I was published that I haven't been published.

I guess I should dig into that, as self-forgiveness if nothing else.

If I have cast the bones correctly, this post should be magically going up just as ephemera 27: Companionship is starting on YouTube. My theory being, hopefully, that you're coming here to get the rest of the story I just read a bit of! In which case GOOD NEWS I have foreseen your need and prepared links for you:

• you can read the story in text here; if you want to carry on where I left off, start from here.
• if you'd prefer to continue in audio, you can listen to Matthew James Hamblin's narration for Podcastle here or anywhere you'd normally grab a podcast--look for episode 667 in your podcatcher/Spotify/iTunes/etc. Pick up where I left off from 16m47s.

Did you miss the live reading? WELL GOOD NEWS FOR YOU TOO the video is on YouTube and I've embedded it for you after the jump:

The ephemera reading series has been run by Jen R. Albert and KT Bryski for a few years now, and featured some incredible writers during that time.

Rather excitingly, I'm now going to be one of them.

ephemera 27: Companionship will be live on YouTube on Wednesday 16th February at 7pm EST (so 0:00 Thursday 17th Feb UTC--going to be a late night for me) and will also feature readings by Vanessa Fogg and Tiffany Morris, plus a visual performance by Illestpreacha. I'll be reading an excerpt from a short; you should come watch, so you too can find out if I can pull off wearing my usual waistcoat-and-tie writer uniform over pyjama bottoms.

Well, this was an unexpected surprise this morning. Clouds in a Clear Blue Sky, as published in PodCastle episode #667 last year, is on the BSFA longlist for Best Short Fiction. This is my first time on the BSFA longlist, and it means a lot that a story so deliberately soaked in Britishness has found itself on a British longlist.

BSFA members can vote on the list from now until February 21st.

The lag in publishing is a funny old thing. To wit: I've not done any new writing since about Easter 2019, thanks to real life, and yet in 2021 I had four new originals come out, which were--in my estimation--probably my best work.