Eligibility 2020

I don’t know if there’s anything I can say about 2020. We endured it. I wrote a lot, because there hasn’t been much else to do and it was one of the few things that made me feel a little better. Though technically the province– and our region– has been into and out of and into various shades of lockdown, we haven’t left our bubble since March. Everything happens at a distance, separated from us by a thin film of dread, hand sanitizer, and masks.

I’ve published a few stories this year. One was completed in lockdown, so it very much belongs to 2020. Once again, I am happy that Clarkesworld has such a fast turnaround for both acceptances and publication: it means that the magazine is a record of the moment.

If you’re a reader or a voter, please consider the following:

“An Important Failure”

In near future Vancouver, a luthier named Mason tries to build a violin, but the wood he needs (old growth spruce, ebony, willow) is harder and harder to find. My defiant celebration of skill and survival while the world falls apart. It’s also available as an audiobook.

“Dysnomia”

This was written for the special Orwell-themed issue (#84) of sub-TERRAIN. It’s about forgetfulness, both collective and private. It’s a slightly totalitarian future full of climate change and denial, and it’s about a woman who slowly loses her words. The world around her is losing things, too.

“Thank You For Your Patience”

In “Dysnomia” and “An Important Failure” I lit wildfires on the Pacific coast. In this one I hit it with a megathrust earthquake. Mark works in a call centre in Ontario, and he’s burnt out and miserable when he gets a call from a woman just as the tremors start.

“Child of Shower and Gleam”

A young pregnant woman tries to make a safe place for her child, while the neighbourhood (and her abusive ex) get increasingly weird. The whole anthology is brilliant and strange, just like everything Undertow publishes.

Representative of 2020: Detroit is less than 1km from where I’m sitting right now, but totally inaccessible, like it’s a different universe.

In addition to the conventionally published stories above, I also posted a couple of things on Curious Fictions, stories I love but which are a little out of step:

“Deep Water”

Something weird happened when these siblings were kids. She might have forgotten what, but it’s still there.

“We Love the Store”

small towns, ghosts, and old weird family businesses.

Footnote to 2019. Eligibility posts.

Three stories came out in 2019 that are eligible for things like awards or year end lists or whatever else there is. This is still weird to write, but I also enjoy other people’s lists when I’m trying to catch up with everything I missed. Here’s mine, in case you want to know:

“Our Fathers Find Their Graves in Our Short Memories” appeared in Interzone 281 (May/June 2019). It’s about memory (nonhuman memory) in a climate change apocalypse.

“The Fourth Trimester is the Strangest” was in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (May/June 2019). This is Obstetrical Horror, the first couple of weeks home with an infant.

“Such Thoughts are Unproductive” in Clarkesworld (December 2019). More climate change, but this time it’s an authoritarian police-state kind of apocalypse. Or maybe not yet an apocalypse. It’s about surveillance and deep fakes and what happens to intimate relationships in such a world.

It’s been an odd and wonderful year. I feel like I’m catching up to where I was before I had my son, as he’s more independent (after a fashion… I mean he can feed himself and walk and things) and I have more time to write. My ongoing resolution has been to write 200 words a day, and I’ve kept that since January 2018, barring one day last month when I had to finish edits on “Such Thoughts are Unproductive.” I’ll keep it up in 2020, too. I’ve written a lot of dross, but the momentum and the discipline have been good for me. I just hope I can finish (and maybe publish?) a few more of the things I’ve written this year.

My First Eligibility Post, or, Stuff I Published in 2017

I have in the past avoided eligibility posts, mostly because I assumed people who wanted to read my work would find it via either the magazines that published it or my earlier posts. But then I saw ACWise collecting 2017 eligibility lists on twitter, and talking about why they’re valuable. She’s right. There’s so much fiction being published now it’s very easy to lose stories. I certainly need the reminder of what I’ve read, so I’m assuming other people do, as well.

So here’s my list, and my contribution to keeping track of 2017 in SF/F. All three of these are Hugo/Nebula/Aurora eligible, and fall into the short fiction category in each case:

“Lares Familiar, 1981” appeared in Liminal Stories back in May. It’s about the Cowichan Valley and the logging industry and a family with an uncomfortable relationship to both. It’s another of my attempts to capture the uneasy feeling that certain legends give me– those stories about strange encounters that never quite resolve, but leave you with a sense of how how huge and complicated and strange the world really is.

“On Highway 18” (this takes you to an interview about the story and includes some buy links if you’re interested) appeared in the September/October issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Another one about strangeness on Vancouver Island, and about violence and the intensity of adolescent friendship.

“The Fall of the Mundaneum” appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies in September. It’s very close to my heart, and I used the story to organize and process a lot of thoughts about the First World War and how the world ends, about the beauty and frustration and vulnerability of archives. I love Oskar (the main character) who is smart and naive and resilient. I love the world, which is full of pre-FWW optimism and utopianism as it falls to the Guns of August.

And that’s my literary 2017: the rainy Pacific coast of Canada; strange meetings; genius loci; mal d’archive; our relationship with history both personal and political; memory; early 20th century optimism and early 20th century violence colliding in the First World War.