2022 Year-End Post

I wasn’t going to write an end-of-year post this year, partly because I usually focus on new stories I’ve published… and this is a gap year for me with nothing new coming out. But despite that it was a good year for me, writing-wise:

• “Colors of the Immortal Palette” was a Hugo, Nebula, Ignyte, and Eugie Award finalist, and was included in Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2022. I am so very proud of that novelette, and I’m deeply grateful for all the honors and attention it got this year.
• The science fiction awards database has (among other things) a list of major award never-winners. The page isn’t quite up to date, but with 14 nominations, I think I’m now in the top 10 for most nominations without a win.

In terms of actual writing, 2022 was a year split almost exactly in half. I spent the early part of the year mostly blocked, and honestly writing had been something of a slog even before that. I ran (over 400 miles this year!), I took photos, and I wrote pages of notes and starts of stories that went nowhere.

Then around mid-year I got the idea to write a story about collaboration, and realized I could do it as a collaboration (with Ken Liu!). This turned out to be an even better idea than I realized–I had lost the joy in writing, and working with Ken was so much fun. It reminded me how much I love the ideas, and the challenge of getting all the pieces to fit together was a satisfying puzzle. The result is a novelette aptly titled “Collaboration?” which is in the January/February issue of Uncanny magazine.

After that the words have flowed somewhat better. Inspired by some of the ideas from “Collaboration?” I wrote a short story that tries to get the reader’s brain to do things that brains do not really do… That one is “We Will Teach You How To Read | We Will Teach You How To Read” and it is forthcoming in Lightspeed.

And now I am working on another collaboration (with Tina Connolly! About MURDER!), and also a short work-for-hire project, and I have ideas kicking around in my head for other stories. So my writing year got off to a slow start, but I am having fun writing stories again, and that is definitely a victory.