This has been a pretty good year for my writing. I’ve had nine fiction publications in 2009, which is my best showing by far.
For anyone reading who is a struggling writer, hustling your butt to get a short story published, I should note that none of these stories were written in the past two years. The average age was probably closer to four years. And I sold most of these stories in 2008, or much much earlier.
In short, the publishing accomplishments of this year represent the work I did 2 to 6 years ago. Hope that gives you a little sense of scale.
One of my stories that I under-publicized was "Prey Play," which came out on Fifth Di… They only keep their stories up for a month, and unfortunately that month was September, when I didn’t have time to breathe, let alone crow about my accomplishments. I can’t even find a Google cache of that story any more.
This year the Zombie Lapdance blog logged over two million visits!
Now, I’ve looked over the post list, and it doesn’t look like that’s likely unless looking at every reply is counted as a separate visit. That means that a blog post with 1500 visits and 6 replies counts as 9000 visits toward the total. But whatever, I’ll take it.
Also, over Thanksgiving I found out that my sister checks my blog three times a day. Doing some quick arithmetic, that means that she herself was responsible for at least 50,000 of the total. Thanks for doing your part, Thora!
So what can we expect in 2010? Certainly there will be more activity on the fiction front. And very soon we will be having a taco-meat photo quiz. I just need to finish carving a trophy with a depiction of cabeza de res.
I’m going to finish up the post with a listing of all the stories I published this year with a summary and relevant links. Because you deserve to start the new year by reading an awesome story.
I hope everyone had a good year, and I hope that 2010 (the year we make contact) will be even better.
"Hometown Horrible: The Legacy of a Wisconsin Writer Revisited" – Pseudopod 2009
This is an audio podcast with an excellent performance by Elie Hirschman.
"Murder at Doty Station" – Black Gate Magazine 2009
This is a spinoff story to my unpublished novel. Like the novel, it takes place in the Patchwork Kingdom, but twenty years earlier.
"The Gaping Corpse" – Black Ink Horror #5 2009
This story was heavily influenced by the works of Joe R. Lansdale. It tries to re-imagine the vampire myth in the most upsetting manner possible. It’s the third in my series of stories playing with voice (it’s in second person imperative).
"Beneath the Red City" – Innsmouth Free Press 2009
This was conceived as a grand unified field theory of paranoid conspiracies, a natural outcome of listening to too much Art Bell late at night. It’s also part of the obligatory fooling around with voice series (second person present tense). You should keep in mind while reading this that the apartment building described here is very much like a place I used to live in.
"A Natural History of the Pancake Badger" on The Town Drunk 2009
"Pancake Badger" hails from the "Monster Attacks" series. It’s one of my few sci-fi sales and involves Catholic schoolgirls and the city of Beloit.
"Anasazi-35" on Fusion Fragment 2009
You can think of this as a sequel to "Pioneers and Indians." It features a return of Sunset MacClaine, one of my favorite characters. This story explores a hypothetical spime economy and the effectiveness of consensus government in a crisis situation.
"Prey Play" – The Fifth Di… 2009
This story started as a dream. In the dream, hyenas were driving around a savanna in a jeep, hanging off the sides and whooping it up as they ran down antelope. Meanwhile, a couple of lions watched from a nearby bluff, bemused by the excesses of youth. This is no longer available on the "Fith Di…" site, but you might still find a cached version somewhere.
"The Call of the Bailiff" – The Book of Tentacles 2009
A story that parodies the horrible Sean Penn vehicle "I am Sam." Only with more ancient ones.
The Elves Hate You – Drabblecast B-sides
This is an abbreviated version of the story, with 50% fewer characters and jokes. But it works a lot better that way on audio with Norm Sherman’s brilliant reading.