It’s always a little surprising when another year passes us by. I mean, it shouldn’t be. I was there, right? But, alas, here we are, and it’s time for another Awards Eligibility post.
Short Stories
It’s been a slow year for short stories, probably because I, um, didn’t write a whole lot of them in the previous year. Also, I’m not working as hard to sell the ones that I do write, since it’s SO much easier to simply drop them in as benefits to my fabulous Patreon subscribers.
The Hero of Your Own Story is my first (and last, since they’re closing down) publication at Daily Science Fiction. This is probably the biggest venue I’ve published in, and I’m really sad to see it go. I LOVE this story, and if there’s one thing of mine that I’d like to see get recognition this year it is this one. It’s a story about forgiving yourself and moving forward after ruining everything. I think many of us can relate to that these days.
Novels
I released three novels this year, all of them in the Old Code series. I wrote two others in a new series, but you won’t see those until next year, so stay tuned on that. I don’t think these are likely to see much award recognition, since they’re the second, third, and fourth novels of a series, but hey this is self promo and we’re just going to put it all out there.
Grandfather Ghost moves forward from Grandfather Anonymous by adding a little spy thriller to the technothriller mix and ramping the action up a bit. I like this one because it deals with eco-terrorism and adds a little depth to some of my main characters.
Grandfather Guardian continues the story of Ajay and Kylie, but brings in my love of murder mysteries. Nothing like a locked room mystery to jazz things up a bit, right?
In Grandfather Zero, the struggle for survival is ramped up a bit. It’s getting harder and harder to stay hidden, and Kylie is starting to learn some essential (and dangerous) survival skills.
Related Works
All right, there’s nothing fancy here, but I do want to mention some related work I’ve been involved in this year.
THE INDIE FILES: An Indie Approach to Series
This blog post over at SFWA was well received, and they were an absolute pleasure to work with. I’m happy with this piece, and I have more in the works. I think the thing I hear most about this one is that it really opened people’s eyes regarding how freeing indie publishing is. Want a longer series? Go for it. Want a branching multiverse of conflicting narratives? It’s all yours.
This section on the SFWA site is new this year and took a monumental effort from many of SFWA’s best indie authors. I took the project over after it was partially complete, and was able to drive home some of the trickier pieces through willpower and research. I remain proud of my work and of everyone else’s work on this, and if it gets any award recognition I will be immensely pleased.