I think we’re all ready to slam the door on 2020, an exhausting experience of a year which consistently dredged up exciting new ways to make us collectively say “oh, for fuck’s sake.” I actually managed to get a lot of writing done, but did a pretty terrible job keeping my website updated; posting anything on here always slipped between the cracks of time spent staying sane by binge-rewatching 90’s Star Trek series, gaming online with friends I’d get together with on Saturdays before the pandemic, and, eventually, looking forward to the weekly spacefaring adventures of The Mandalorian. Since the year’s finally coming to a close, I thought I should finally mention the handful of publications I’ve had in 2020’s second half which never really got a proper shout-out.

In July, I had a short story published within the digital folds of The J.J. Outré Review, an online quarterly journal featuring all sorts of genre fiction. My contribution was a sci-fi piece titled Likeness, a story about an ordinary guy getting a lot more than he bargained for after signing over the use of his likeness in the possible near future of the post-deepfake acting industry. You can read it for yourself here! (UPDATE: The J.J. Outré Review has since vanished from the internet without any hint of what happened to it or communication with the writers who were slated to be published in their upcoming issues.)

Then, in August, I had a pair of drabbles published in Ancients, a dark microfiction anthology published by Black Hare Press. The first, Freedom, is about a gladiator fighting to free himself, and the second, Monumental Mourning, involves the sudden awakening of a certain ancient monument. If tiny tales of ancient myths and civilizations are up your alley, you can snag a copy of Ancients on Amazon.

October offered up a fantastic surprise; I was able to find a perfect home for something I never actually thought would get published, haha. I’d written a poem about a particular moment in piratical history, a day from 1717 which will hopefully be remembered as the charming, odd pinnacle of Benjamin Hornigold’s infamous career. The poem, An Uncommon Bounty, was one of the first pieces published by Sundial Magazine, a new online magazine of historical fiction. You can read the poem here!

Finally, earlier this month, I had a short story published in Sunshine Superhighway, a collection of optimistic sci-fi stories put together by the fine folks at JayHenge Publishing! They previously published my civicspunk story Like Clockwork in their Unrealpolitik anthology, which was also edited by Jessica Augustsson. This time around, my story’s called The Best Thing Since, a sci-fi piece about the simple pleasure of sharing a familiar meal. I’m really glad to end this long year with an upbeat anthology; if you want to dive into some optimistic fiction yourself, the book’s readily available on Amazon.