It's that time, and this year, I'm actually going to do a little retrospective post. I tend to shy away from them, partly out of a deeply-ingrained Welsh horror of being seen to blow my own trumpet, and partly because, by this time of year, I'm heartily sick of listing the things I've written. But 2024 has often seemed like a year of slogging away at projects still nowhere near seeing the light of day, so it was a bit of a surprise to realise I've actually published more short stories this year than any other, as well as realising a longstanding writing dream. That seems worth noting!
That said, you might be sick of reading end-of-year newsletters right now. If you are, let me offer you a snippet of seasonal spookiness instead: as always, my little NYE ghost story, "Grey Mary", is
. Go, be free, enjoy.
I've been applying to
-- Hay Festival's development programme for emerging Welsh writers -- since I first became aware of it in the pre-Covid era, and this year I finally made it in.
The experience really is unlike anything else. Hay is about an hour's drive from my hometown, Pontypool, so I've attended plenty of festival events over the years, but being on-site and immersed for the whole week-and-change is something else. As well as the programme events, there are small, intensive sessions with internationally renowned authors. The biggest names were often the most unpretentious -- notably, Andrew O'Hagan was incredibly kind and down-to-earth, and I don't think I'm the only one who came away nursing a crush on Sarah Perry...
The most important things I took away, though, were the relationships with other writers. Especially when you're working in a genre space, writing can be a lonely thing to do. Online SFF spaces in particular can be very US-centric, and it's easy to feel like you're typing into the void. But being thrown together into such an intensive whirlwind of activity (not to mention the vagaries of the crew catering facilities...) means you end up getting pretty damn comfortable with each other pretty fast. Maybe I was lucky enough to end up with a uniquely kind, supportive, and talented group, or maybe it's just the kind of experience that brings out the best in people. Either way, I'm glad I know them.
Ahem. Sappiness over; here's the publishing roundup.
My first story of the year, in March, was "Small Passengers" in
All Worlds Wayfarer
magazine. It's about a magical tattooist and a moment of connection in a dispiriting world:
The band of skin around the girl's wrist was the puckered, unhealthy grey of someone who’d been drained of essence. The process left a physical mark where the subject had been touched—and people were different, afterward. Quieter, less confident. Like ghosts of themselves. You had to be desperate to sell your essence. The people Carey knew who’d done it had been sick, or addicts, or on the verge of eviction.They bit back the urge to ask why, or to offer unasked-for sympathy. Lily looked them in the eye, the faintest flicker of a challenge in her gaze.
Say you’re sorry
, it seemed to say,
see how stupid it sounds.
It's no longer free to read on the website, but you can buy the issue
.
Also in March: "Light as Air", a fantasy murder mystery about some dysfunctional lesbians, in the
anthology:
The Empress of the Four Corners is dead, and those who have failed her stand vigil beside her body.Four guards – the Empress’s most trusted generals – hold themselves upright as rods, each standing before his or her patron god. Each maintains a mask of impassivity as still as the dead woman’s face, which is as serene in death as it was shrewd and sharp in life. They will remain there until first light, when the priests arrive to resume their rites.As far as Elith of the Earth Corps is concerned, the whole thing’s a fucking waste of time. There wasn’t a mark on the Empress’s body. She wasn’t old, but, with two grown sons, nor was she young. But Elith knows – deep in the marrow of her bone
knows
– there was nothing natural about her death.
In April, my icy fantasy story "Winter Wears No Crown" mas published in
. I'd almost given up hope on finding it a home, so I'm very grateful to Mark for taking a chance on it and giving some much-needed feedback!
Rhin wouldn’t be sure, later, when the cold in the air turned into something more than cold. She seemed to see it freeze, the air sparkling with crystals, and to feel its brightness on her skin, in her nostrils, clinging to her eyelashes. At some point, her scarf fell down from over her nose and mouth, and she didn’t feel it. She breathed into her hands, ran her tongue over her lips and found them chapped and bleeding, but it was as if her face belonged to someone else.Time stretched; became strange. She no longer knew how long she’d been walking. The sky darkened, lightened, and then seemed to turn black again before she’d fully noticed. At one point she realised she was sitting down, and her heart beat panic-fast as she forced herself to her feet, terrified by how close she’d come to freezing to death in the snow.Who was she to think she could survive in the Cold God’s land? A fool, that was who.
In May,
reprinted my selkie story, "Vintage Fur":
There’s a palpable thrum of excitement surrounding the imminent Deep Waters launch. By the time this piece goes live, we’ll know what it is, but I feel like a kid awaiting Santa. We’re not here to discuss it, officially, but the atmosphere is infectious.
“Only a couple of hours to the launch,” Tecca tells me. “But trust me, it’ll be worth the wait.”
With her famous privacy, I’d expected her to be strictly on-task and perhaps a touch humourless, but there’s a twinkle in her eye.
I also had a gross (and possibly not-safe-for-life) alien horror story published in issue #2 of
It's called "Star Jelly":
Up close, you can see their individual shapes. They’re different sizes, different colours, some milky white, others tinged with blue, green, lavender. They’re not much like jellyfish, really. They’re shaped more like the sea-urchin shells sold in every souvenir shop along the front—ridged, squashed spheres that look as though they’d feel satisfying in your hand.It’s not that you consciously decide to scoop one up. You’ll insist on that, to yourself, later. But it comes close to you, via some form of motion you don’t quite understand, squirting out water through a hole in its top that looks—the thought is irresistible—perfectly sized for your forefinger to fit into.
Two SF stories came out in June. The first, in
, was "Remember Me as My Best Self", a near-future story about what happens when capitalism gets its hands on our memories:
The default image was one Eva had chosen herself. She stood more upright than she’d been able to manage in a long time, and wore the silver star necklace Aislyn’s father had bought her before he died. She’d given it up in later years, no longer able to stand the feeling of anything around her neck. The permanent map of pinpricks and bruises on her inner elbows from an endless battery of blood tests was gone, and her dark hair was only lightly sprinkled with grey.Unexpected tears sprang to Aislyn’s eyes. She blinked them back. “Mum.”Eva smiled at her. “Sweetheart.” Even at the end she’d been capable of occasional, brief displays of affection, moments that sparkled like flecks of mica in granite. Something inside Aislyn swelled with gratitude.“I don’t remember coming home from the memory centre,” Eva said. She glanced down at the backs of her hands – the image of them not quite opaque – and back at Aislyn. “Ah. Well, then.”
The other, "
, won second place in the Language Evolves short story competition run by researchers at Cardiff University, and is free to read on their website:
The translator crosses spongy ground that ripples eggshell-bluephosphorescence with each step she takes, passing between low, domed dwellings beside which the insistent upward thrust of the tower looks like an imposition, a boast. She is sweating, because of the soggy humidity, and because today she will meet the Council. If her command of the language does not impress them, she’ll be on the next ship off-world and back to the welter of disappointments that awaits her at home.
July was a bumper month, with three new stories published and one reprint! First came
(free to read) in
Neon Dystopia
. This one depicts domestic abuse and violence, so please be advised before reading:
Teja patted my arm. “I’d better head back. Danny’ll have a shitfit if I leave him alone out there with the Yummy Mummies Lunch Brigade.”Her tone told me I’d done a decent impression of annoyed instead of terrified. Good. Robbie showing up always made me feel like I was still the spineless doormat who’d taken two years to get away from him. Being able to hide it gave me some small measure of control.I lingered over the dishes, grateful for the relative quiet of the kitchen. Like most commercial buildings, the café required you to have ads enabled to enter, but at least out back, there were only my own to deal with. Other people’s signatures pressing in on all sides, ads propagating by the dozen if I looked at them too long, meant public spaces made my teeth itch.
Next, in
, was "Digital Hell is Cold". This is another story featuring a coercive relationship, so again, use your judgement:
The ascension chamber, tucked quietly away where no guest is likely to stumble on it, is warm and lined with twinkling lights. A bright womb for our bright resurrection. Lise guides me into the scanner with a hand on my bicep, gentle and inexorable, fingernails tipped with diamond dust. “You’re tense,” she tells me, “remember your breathing,” and I do my best to relax. To trust.I wouldn’t have this life without her. Her money shapes it, but so does her vision. She has plucked me from the mundane world, and now she is giving me forever – giving me Heaven, after a fashion.Even when she seems unkind, it is to make me better. She tells me so often, and with so ardent a shine in her eyes I believe her.
There was also the release of the
collection, including "Shadows Like Hunting Sharks", which appeared there last year. It's a dark urban fantasy story about a young woman whose cursed eye shows her threatening figures:
A line of light crept through beneath the black felt of the eyepatch. Not the sickly, artificial yellow of the Tube lights, but a thin, misty dawn-grey: the kind of light you only see when you’ve been forced from your bed at some ungodly hour or failed to sleep at all. Not unexpected. The balancer—Newt, he’d called himself—had warned me that the curse would steal colour and life from the world, that I’d never see either out of my cursed eye again. I’d decided I could deal with that.What he hadn’t mentioned were the shadows.
Then came
, free to read in
Heartlines Spec
. It's a quiet story about two survivors from a destroyed world starting to build a new home:
That single perforation was all it took. The pod gave you up easily into my arms, naked and fully-formed and sticky all over with thick, golden liquid. You heaved for air. The light and my panic made your body an abstract thing—a collection of planes, like slabs of honey-coloured stone—but I understood the weight of it, under which I sagged; its warmth; its need.I hooked my arm under your shoulder and hefted you to your feet. The exertion forced a grunt from my chest. Somehow, I hadn’t expected you to be so solid.A rumble from our left—from the east side of the city, where the fires raged. Your first, shaky words were, “What’s happening?”
That was all until December, which kicked off with a non-fiction essay on fantastical doubles in three recent novels, Vajra Chandrasekera's
The Saint of Bright Doors,
Carly Holmes's
Crow Face, Doll Face,
and Lloyd Markham's
Fox Bites
. It's in the latest issue of
.
And one final bit of fiction for the year: "A Universe Cupped in the Palm of Her Hand" appeared in the
from Bannister Press, which came out just before Christmas. It's another quieter story about an ordinary woman who's invited to go universe-hopping with a goddess, but finds the universes have other ideas:
It was a Tuesday afternoon when Annie found the universe at the bottom of a teacup.She remembered the goddess who’d left it immediately, because they were such a rare sight around here. Deities on walkabout tended to frequent more upper-crust establishments, and if they went in for baked goods, it was French patisserie rather than Suzanne’s banana loaf.This one had asked for a pot of Earl Grey and a toasted teacake. She’d glanced around at the other customers, and in a blink, her flowing robes had been replaced by a pink puffball skirt and a t-shirt bearing the name of a local record shop. She could almost have been any other artsy young person dropping in for an afternoon caffeine fix. It was like she didn’t want to be noticed, or worshipped.
Maybe something in that long list tickles your fancy? If it does -- or if you've read and enjoyed something there already -- one of the best things you can do to support small presses and authors is to say so. Leave a review or rating wherever you buy your books or record your reading? Tell your friends? Stir the cauldron three times and whisper your thoughts to the full moon?
What I've been reading
I've been in the mood for some midwinter spookiness, so I'm making my way through
, one of several anthologies of vintage Yuletide ghost stories edited by Tanya Kirk. The stories, as one expects with these things, are a mixed bag, ranging from the classically weird to the sentimental.
What I've been watching
We've watched a bunch of 00s-era horror films over the post-Christmas vegetating period. Along with
Ginger Snaps
,
Dog Soldiers
is one of the films responsible for my enduring fear of werewolves, and it holds up as a piece of horror -- though I'd somehow managed to mentally edit out the random, jarring two-minute misogyny dump toward the end. Some things are worse than fangs.
What I've been listening to
I mentioned midwinter eerie, and Susan Cooper's
The Dark is Rising
is the formative text on that score for many of us. The
is a superb adaptation, transporting me right out of the Cardiff Christmas shopping crowds to the snow-carpeted Old Ways...
And that's a wrap on 2024. Until next time, Blwyddyn Newydd Dda.
JL