Hello and welcome to my annual end of year writing round up which finds me, in the Space Year 2025, surprised at what I have to talk about.
Last year was all about Worldcon in Glasgow and being Junior Editor Third Class on the anthology the Glasgow SF Writer’s Circle produced for that. (It was Gallus and I’m still very proud of that. If you haven’t come across it, may I humbly suggest you give it a look). As such, I hadn’t really thought much about what I had lined up for this year in the wonderful world of short fiction publication and so it has surprised me a lot to discover I had three and a half stories out.
First up was the half story, it being Sterilising Fluid. This was something that had come out in an anthology in 2024 but the publishers decided to give it a whirl in it’s own wee chapbook format. Which makes it the first thing I’ve had out with solely my work in it, even if it isn’t that long. So that was a nice way to start the year.
Second was The Miranda Effect, a bit of fantasy nonsense about government departments, interfering Ministers and a poor Margaret Rutherford impersonator.
Third was Mother Menzies’ Tablet From the Afore Times. This was the one I’d hoped to see come out before the end of 2024 but writing, like drinking hot tea, has many a slip twixt cup and lip which delays my being seen by the general public. It’s a post-apocalypse piece but with a hint of hope around retaining important historical documents.
And finally was Spinach 419, a bit of a bonkers SF piece about the dangers of spam emails and the joys of gardening.
Certainly more than I’d expected to come out this year, and way more than I’m expecting in the future. Although, speaking of the future, next year marks forty years of the Glasgow SF Writer’s Circle and there may well be something to celebrate that, so keep an eye open, why don’t you.
And so we come to the usual Christmas present, i.e. an old publication of mine posted up here to join my list of free fiction. This year we go to the town where I grew up and consider the uncanny things you can find while waiting for a school bus in Beyond Baltic, as first published in KZine Issue 17 from 2016. Which sounds both like yesterday and too long ago, but certainly better than thinking about when the story is set as I was most definitely not twelve yesterday or ten years ago. Yikes.
Anyhoo, hope you enjoy. Stay warm now.
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