2021: The year of the four emperors

 Merry Christmas, one and all!

I hope this December sees you fine and healthy after yet another year of pestilence and incompetently corrupt government. It's that time of year where people recap their writing successes and I jump on the bandwagon with my meagre offerings and a bit of free fiction.

But this year I have a surprising amount to shout about for I had four, count 'em, four, stories published this year. A phenomenal amount for me and I can't ever say thank you enough to those wonderful editors who picked my little stories.

First of all was Sacrificial Gasoline, published in New Maps in April. A story about incompetent and corrupt government, oddly enough, and it's interaction with climate change. It can be found here

The second appeared in the anthology A Quiet Afternoon 2 and is called Rab the Giant and the Problem Neighbour. It's a quieter piece about being a good neighbour and not jumping to conclusions and can be bought here

Third was Gentrification and the Dream House, published in KZine in June and available here

This one is my attempt at a proper portal fantasy, somewhat let down by the characters being in their forties and not their childhood.

Finally last month brought us Titanic Terrstructures, a fairly titanic book in it's own right and an anthology of stories set around ginormous SF structures. Mine also has Aunts and they can be found here

I am extremely happy about all of these and not a little shocked to see them all together like this. Sadly I'll not see this many in one go for a long while to come, if nothing else because my writing this year has been very bitty and inconsequential. I will blame it on a second year of pandemic based brain fog but abject laziness does have a part to play as well. Here's hoping that next year I can write more as I have a TV studio set thing I've been working on for ages I'd love to get out there and a thing about post-apocalyptic tablet that keeps gnawing at the back of my brain.

One thing I did mange to write was flash fiction in October, following the Glasgow Writer Circle prompts. The output from that can be found here if you didn't see it at the time here or on Twitter.

And now to the traditional Christmas gift of free fiction. This year I bring you Why did you leave your last employer? This was a story that got picked up for publishing last year, in 2020, but, due to the editor's politics not agreeing with mine, shall we say, I never pimped it. Unfortunate but I didn't feel happy directing people towards the magazine after some of the things the editor said.

Anyhoo, I now produce it here so you can see what it was. Hope you like it.