The writing life is about putting one foot in front of the other. I took a lot of steps in 2015.
Publishing-wise, this was my most successful year, yet. I’ve always built off previous years, but 2015 had a lot of great moments. “The Polka Man” came out in Faed from A Murder of Storytellers. “Mercury Beach” appeared in Yellow Mama, accompanied by an excellent illustration. “A Simple Device” was published in Rejected from ACA Books. “A Burial” was featured as part of the Page and Spine Fiction Showcase. “C Was for Cat” found a home with Body Parts Magazine. “Copy Rights” was printed in a beautiful edition of Sanitarium. “Voids” was posted by the Saturday Night Reader. I even sold another poem. “Crow, Why Do You Cry” appeared in Illumen. I published short stories every month at the Confabulator Cafe. To top it all off, my first solo collection All Manner of Dark Things came out in April and has been pretty well received. Financially, I made far more writing than I ever had before. Trust me, that’s not saying much. I turned around and invested the money in my writing education, taking classes at LitReactor with some of my favorite writers, such as Benjamin Whitmer, Nicholas Kaufman, Helen Marshall, Jordan Hamessley, and Simon Strantzas.
I got the opportunity do A LOT of panels at ConQuest in Kansas City. Eight panels, plus a reading. I think I moderated five. I was running all weekend and exhausted by the end of it, but it was a great experience. I love talking about books, writing, and the horror genre in particular. I did more panels at the Longview Literary Festival at Metropolitan Community College. I spoke to the Young Writer’s Group at Sumner Academy in Kansas City. They were amazing, and I wish them great success. Who knows where the literary life will take them? I did a signing at the local Hastings and another at the Topeka Public Library’s Great Writers, Right Here author fair. I even served as a juror for the 2015 Stoker Awards. There were other opportunities for events that I didn’t take advantage of, but I hope that this is just the beginning.
2015 is going to be hard to beat, but I am going to give it a shot. “Assholes with Guns” just came out in The Literary Hatchet. “Blood and Dust” will be out in Theater B from A Murder of Storytellers very soon, and “Patchwork” will be coming out in Typhon: A Monster Anthology from Pantheon Magazine. I am also hoping that both my novella Mama’s Little Boy and my second collection Whispers and Proclamations will be out some time this year. There will surely be other things. There always is. I am planning on being at ConQuest and Longview again. WorldCon will be in Kansas City this year, and I would love to be a part of it. I may even pick up a couple more cons here and there as they fit in to my schedule. There have been discussions about me conducting a couple of writer’s workshops, and my monthly contributions to The Confabulator Cafe will continue.
As I said at the beginning, this profession is about always moving forward. I’m proud of my 2015 steps, but I hope to take many more in 2016. It’s a long journey, but the only way to get where I’m going is to keep writing and see what opportunities present themselves. Thank you for following along in 2015, and I hope you will still be there with me a year from now.
Links to all of this year’s publications can be found by clicking “The Work” in my header menu. You can pick up a signed copy of All Manner of Dark Things at “The Store” if you prefer to avoid Amazon.