Year-end summaries are always a struggle for me. I always seem to take it as an opportunity to collect my regrets for the year: I didn’t write enough, didn’t edit enough, didn’t self-promote enough, didn’t sell a novel, didn’t make it onto the year-end lists.

I don’t believe in New Year’s Resolutions - I’d rather start in on the things I need and want to do when they come to me, instead of waiting for a special date to come and go. But maybe it’s time to try out a tradition of Year End Absolutions instead - taking some pride in the things I did do, grieving the time lost to migraine, and forgiving myself for what I wanted to make happen and couldn’t.

Whatever the year’s end means, or doesn’t, here’s how the year in publishing looked for me.

NOVELLA

“Starstruck”. A book about a radish and her wife and a human child and an annoyingly whimsical rock. It has some of the trappings of Cozy, but at its heart, it’s mostly quiet and bittersweet and perhaps also a little whimsical (though hopefully not annoyingly so).

SHORT STORIES

“Because I Held His Name Like a Key”. My favorite thing I wrote this year. Some thoughts about consciousness, creation, the emptiness of AI, and Alan Turing’s affair with a prince of Faerie.

“The Wefthunter”. Written for the new Magic: the Gathering sci-fi setting. A sad, stubborn alien lets empathy get in the way of his investigation of a dangerous artifact.

“La Forêt de Fontainebleu, Les Chasseurs, Le Renard”. Set in the Louvre; all the characters are pieces of the artwork to be seen there.

“The Nature of Spells, the Nature of Children”. Thoughts about motherhood and the raising of children, filtered through the perspective of a teapot in a familiar cursed mansion.

FLASH FICTION

“The Sister Who Left”. I wrote this for my sister and she said it made her cry. If you like it too, that’s just icing on the cake.

“The Versions of Yourself That You're Better Off Without”. My first appearance in Nightmare, with a vicious little story about hating your past self, every single version of her.

“You Always Told Her You'd Give Her the World”. Thinking about parenthood again, and all the things people are willing to give away to make a child happy now without thinking about the real cost and who will pay it.