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.

All things being equal, I have a new story out in Podcastle this week: Clouds in a Clear Blue Sky. It is, I think, the best thing I've done since The Bone Poet & God, and I'm nervous and excited in equal measure for you all to hear it.

The first draft got started with an 800 word intro that eventually got cut for word count reasons, but remains the seed of the story and something I can't let go of. It never made sense for it to go back on the beginning of the narrative proper, as it just slowed down the start, but it works pretty well as a teaser, so in anticipation of the publication of Clouds in a Clear Blue Sky, please enjoy this 4 minute prologue: The Cloud Factory.