December 2020 update

Thanks to encouragement from some fellow SF Canada members, I participated in NaNoWriMo in November—not working on one specific project, but trying to make progress on some short stories and a poetry collection. Though I didn’t hit the NaNoWriMo target of 50,000 words, I did manage to more than triple my usual monthly output by writing more than 30,000 words, which I count as a success! I got the base draft completed for two novelettes as well as a couple of re-drafts and a start on a collection of non-speculative haibun. Now to work on refinements. 

Recent Publications
A poem “Planets With Two Moons” was published in Spaceports and Spidersilk, Hiraeth Publishing, October 2020. 

My review of Ursula Pflug’s Seeds and Other Stories appeared on The Future Fire web site November 20. The link is below: 

http://reviews.futurefire.net/2020/11/pflug-seeds-and-other-stories.html 

Looking back on the books I’ve read over the course of the year, I’d say Seeds and Other Stories is up in my top three, along with Julie Czerneda’s Mirage and Nina Munteanu’s A Diary in the Age of Water.

What I’m Working On
During the next month, I’ll be refining and sending out some of the raw work I put together during November, as well as working on a submission for a specific call for 1960’s detective stories. Researching for that has been a lot of fun so far! Being born toward the end of the 1950’s, I was around for the ’60s, but have needed some fact-checking to fill in the blanks. 

I also have some book reviews to complete and submit.

Coming Soon
A handful of poems are due out in December, January, and February. More on those as they appear.

 

 

November 2020 Update

Lots of rain the past couple of weeks in our part of southern Ontario. Not to mention the first snowfall a couple of days ago. All the more reason to stay in and write!

Recent Publications
My short story “The Disconnect” was included in Third Flatiron’s Brain Games: Stories to Astonish (Third Flatiron Anthologies Book 28).

Four poems, “For Leonard,” “Ghost Planet,” “History Waits to be Written,” and “Wings of Wax,” were published in Stellar Evolutions, an anthology of stories and poems from the first fifteen issues of Polar Borealis Magazine. In total, the anthology includes 21 poems and 23 short stories selected and edited by RainWood Press Publisher Rhea E. Rose.

A poem “ABC’s of Sci-Fi Nightmares” was published in Polar Borealis, Issue 16:

http://polarborealis.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/POLAR-BOREALIS-16-Sep-Oct-2020.pdf

A poem “For Laika” appeared in House of Zolo Journal of Speculative Literature, Volume 2, available through Amazon.

A poem titled “Into the Sea” was published in Utopia Science Fiction, Vol. 2, Issue 2, October 2020.

A cartoon titled “Corvid” was published on the Funny Pearls web site, October 9, 2020:

https://funnypearls.com/2020/10/corvid-lisa-timpf/

My review of A.J. Hackwith’s Library of the Unwritten appeared in The Fifth Di..., published by Hiraeth Books, September 1, 2020.

A review of Suzanne Palmer’s Finder appeared on the New Myths web site, at the link below:

https://sites.google.com/a/newmyths.com/nmwebsite/books-we-are-reading/finder

I posted a review of And the Angels Sang by Lorina Stephens on Goodreads.

What I’m Working On
I’ve been continuing to work on short stories for send-out, while also reading through various resources on plot and theme. After some dithering, I opted to enrol in NaNoWriMo, thanks to a discussion on the SF Canada website. Rather than tackling a novel per se, I’ll be focussing on nature haibun, based largely on material drawn from canoeing/camping journals, and on science fiction short stories for various upcoming calls.

And, of course, I’m continuing to pick away at some book reviews I’ve committed to do. One of the books I read recently, Julie E. Czerneda’s Mirage, was a real gem. Since I jumped into the series mid-stream, reading Mirage inspired me to check out some of the previous volumes dealing with the central characters, and I liked those too! When I place the review, I’ll post information about where to find it.