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:

In addition, I published one translation:

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:

Novelettes:

 
9
Kudos
 
9
Kudos

Now read this

Life is a Ring of Keys

On Saturday, I saw Fun Home on Broadway and the Encores! concert production of Zorba. They both had amazing casts. I wish they both had amazing texts. Fun Home is a musical based on the autobiographical comic of the same name by Alison... Continue →