2014
The most important event of my life in 2014, unfortunately, was the death of my father in May. Nothing else stands up that. He’d been suffering from dementia for years. Maybe he’d already died when my mom had died. And yet, that, somehow, doesn’t make his death any less shocking or hurt any less.
The next most important event pales in comparison. 2014 is also the year I won a Hugo for my short story “The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere”. That whole experience was fantastic in the literal sense. I keep expecting to wake up to find that I dreamed the whole thing. The story was my 3rd SFWA qualifying sale (and 4th overall). I’ll do my best to live up to the promise of that Hugo win.
In 2014, I published three short stories:
- “Repairing the World” edited by Sigrid Ellis for Apex Magazine
- “A Cost-Benefit Analysis of the Proposed Trade-Offs for the Overhaul of the Barricade” edited by Ann VanderMeer for Tor.com
- “Double Time” edited by Alisa Krasnostein and Julia Rios for the anthology, Kaleidoscope, published by Twelve Planet Press.
In addition, I published one translation:
- “Pepe” by Tang Fei, edited by Neil Clarke for Clarkesworld
I wanted to blog more regularly in 2014. That obviously didn’t happen. However, this is a new year and I may find more stuff to blog about. We’ll see…
As usual, I fell way behind on my reading. The tower of novels I want to read but haven’t yet is so tall, it’d probably kill me if it ever toppled over. (This is a metaphorical tower, BTW. Many of those novels are ebooks.) Likewise, there are still a bunch of magazines that I still haven’t gotten to. Much of my short fiction “reading” this year was really listening to podcasts on my commute to work.
And, yet, this is not going to stop me from posting my woefully incomplete list of my favorite short stories and novelettes published in 2014. If I ever catch up, I may update it over time.
First, though, I want to single out Campbell Award eligible Kai Ashante Wilson’s novelette “The Devil in America”. It is beautifully written, gripping, and perhaps the most important story published in 2014. Kudos also to Ann VanderMeer who edited it for Tor.com. If you read only one story on this list, please make it “The Devil in America.”
Short stories:
- Ball and Chain by Maggie Shen King, Asimov’s, February 2014
- Morrigan in the Sunglare by Seth Dickinson, Clarkesworld, March 2014
- The Mao Ghost by Chen Qiufan (translated by Ken Liu), Lightspeed, March 2014
- Sleep Paralysis by Dale Bailey, Nightmare Magazine, April 2014
- Francisca Montoya’s Almanac of Things That Can Kill You by Shaenon K. Garrity. Lightspeed April 2014
- This Is the Way I Die by Damien Angelica Walters, Nightmare Magazine, May 2014
- Pepe by Tang Fei, Clarkesworld, June 2014 (Disclaimer: I translated this.)
- A Cup of Salt Tears by Isabel Yap, Tor.com, August 2014
- A Meaningful Exchange by Kat Howard, Lightspeed August 2014 (Note: Gabrielle de Cuir gives this story a perfect reading for the podcast.)
- Taxidermist in the Underworld by Maria Dahvana Headley, Clarkesworld, Oct 2014
- A Kiss with Teeth by Max Gladstone, Tor.com, October 2014
- Mrs. Sorensen and the Sasquatch by Kelly Barnhill, Tor.com, October 2014
Novelettes:
- The Devil in America by Kai Ashante Wilson, Tor.com, April 2014
- The End of the End of Everything by Dale Bailey, Tor.com, April 2014
- The Day the World Turned Upside Down by Thomas Olde Heuvelt, Lightspeed, April 2014
- Spores by Seanan McGuire, The End Is Nigh (anthology), reprinted Nightmare June 2014 (Note: 7509 words, a mere 9 words longer than a short story.)
- Brisk Money by Adam Christopher, Tor.com, July 2014
- We Are the Cloud by Sam J. Miller, Lightspeed, September 2014