2018 was a dreamily wonderful year for me in terms of publication. So dreamy, in fact, that I’m apparently still asleep. Hence why I’m writing this now when everyone else has made their award eligibility posts a month ago.

But nominations are still open for the major SF/F awards. So I’ve listed my 2018 publications below, aided by attempts at pithy, funny summaries. Attempts, I say, because this might get long and not so pithy. If brevity is the soul of wit, then I have none of it. Sorry, Shakes.

Some of the awards I’m eligible for include:

• The Hugo Awards: Nominations are open until March 16 at 11:59 Pacific Daylight Time. Nominating can be done by current Worldcon members, members of last year’s Worldcon, or members of next year’s Worldcon.
• The Nebula Awards: Nominations are open until February 15 for Active and Associate members of SFWA (Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America).
• The Aurora Awards: For the best Canadian SF/F of the year. Nominations are open from March 1 to May 21. Members of the
  Canadian Science Fiction & Fantasy Association are allowed to nominate and vote.
• I’m also in my first year of eligibility for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. It is not technically a Hugo, but it follows the same nomination and voting process. Nominations are open until March 15 at 11:59 Pacific Daylight Time.

And here are the individual stories I’ve published this year, and what they are eligible for. Stories marked with a * are available to read for free.

Eligible for Best Short Story (Hugo Awards and Nebula Awards):

*“The Mooncakes of My Childhood” (330 words) in PodCastle. A short piece on the rock-hard, northern version of mooncakes, and how they could be weaponized.

“A Place Without Seasons” (1,370 words) in Factor Four Magazine. Sentient snowbunnies can stick around after winter rather than going the way of Frosty the Snowman… if you stick them in the freezer, of course.

*“Subtle Ways Each Time” (2,100 words) in Escape Pod. A man loses a woman, and decides time travel is the solution. He might be wrong.

“Final Flight of the PhoenixWing” (3,760 words) in The Razor’s Edge. Gundam, but with time dilation and an old lady protagonist.

*“Glass Heart Giant” (3,850 words) in Sanctuary. What if you were trapped inside someone’s literal heart? Written in a day.

Eligible for Best Novelette (Hugo Awards and Nebula Awards):

*“The Palace of the Silver Dragon” (7,820 words) in Strange Horizons. No one who hears the Silver Dragon’s song and jumps into the sea ever returns alive. Aliah knows this, as she takes the leap.

*“The Girl with the Frozen Heart” (8,300 words) in Awakenings from Book Smugglers Publishing. The story of a dying girl, a god who tries to save her, and a boy who falls in love with her.

“The Lady of Butterflies” (8,970 words) in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. A foreign girl with no memories appears in the Kejalin court, and the First Sword of the Empire is forced to be her caretaker.

All the above stories are also eligible for the Aurora Award for Best Short Fiction.

I’ve also published two poems, which are eligible for the Rhysling Award (nominations by members of the Science Fiction Poetry Association) and the Aurora Award for Best Poem or Song.

*“The Cosmos Chronicler” in Polar Borealis #6. Astronomy-inspired freeverse.

*“Death’s Knotted Circle” in Polar Borealis #8. Iambic pentametre published in 2018. About as gloomy as the title suggests.

Concluding Thoughts: I’m quite proud of the amount of stories I’ve published this year. Less proud of my inability to blog consistently, and to write my detailed thoughts about every story (as I’ve promised).

I’m still in the wide-eyed honeymoon phase of publishing, so I read reviews. They have been quite positive and even heartwarming (I am writing that down here, so that one day, buried beneath scathing reviews, I can look back and laugh at myself. That’s when I’ll know I’ll have become a “real writer”). “The Lady of Butterflies” and “The Palace of the Silver Dragon,” in particular, have garnered a number of positive reviews (which I, of course, retweeted gleefully). Those two happen to be my personal favourites as well. “The Lady of Butterflies” is more classic secondary-world fantasy, and I planned it out scene by scene, while “The Palace of the Silver Dragon” is darker and I myself took half the story to figure out the main character’s actual deal.

For anyone who read anything I published this year, I would love to hear your thoughts below, positive or negative.

Current Projects: I have two stories and a poem forthcoming in 2019. One will be in Clarkesworld, and the other two I cannot announce yet.

I am also slogging through the third act of a fantasy time travel novel set in the same world as “The Lady of Butterflies.” I’ve finally restarted development on a visual novel I wrote three years ago; I thought I was done the writing part, but apparently three-year-old prose is kinda yucky, who would’ve thought? I am still working on short stories, though more in terms of editing existing ones rather than writing new ones. For now, at least.

This was supposed to be an awards eligibility post. It seems to have veered off-track. Attempt #8923476 at being pithy. Result: not achieved.