taking stock

[truepenny]

As the new year begins, my story "Blue Lace Agate" is live at Lightspeed. (Author interview here.) "Blue Lace Agate" is chronologically the first story about Mick and Jamie, the protagonists of "A Night in Electric Squidland" and "Impostors" (in Somewhere Beneath Those Waves), and I'm delighted that it has finally found a home.

ETA: Also, Mateusz Skutnik has a charming little New Year's game which I commend to your attention.

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Although I don't usually write year-in-review posts, after the year I've just had, I really do feel the need to sit down and take stock (4,691 irradiated haggis, check).

So.

In 2011 I:

• had three books published:
  
  • The Tempering of Men [with matociquala]
    
  • Somewhere Beneath Those Waves
    
  • The Bone Key 2nd ed.

(Also, holy shit, one of my books has a second edition. OMG ELEVENTY-ONE.)

• had two short stories and an essay published:
  
  • "The Devil in Gaylord's Creek" (Fantasy Magazine 50)
    
  • "Why Do You Linger?" (Subterranean Magazine 8)
    
  • "The Kindness of Monsters" (Whedonistas)
  
  
• sold some reprints:
  
  • "The Yellow Dressing Gown" (Apex Magazine 31)
    
  • "Bringing Helena Back" (New Cthulhu: The Recent Weird)
    
  • "Mongoose" [with matociquala] (also New Cthulhu)
    
  • "Boojum" [again with matociquala] (Drabblecast 202-203)
  
  
• self-published a chapbook, Unnatural Creatures, as a fundraiser and raised $3200 for the University of Wisconsin-Madison Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital's Companion Animal Fund
  
• did some erratic blogging for tor.com

Also in 2011 I:

• had two cats die, which was horrible
  
• suffered both a Baker's cyst and a Morton's neuroma in my right lower appendage--said right lower appendage also continued to be stiff and painful (ranging from subliminal ow all the way up to ow!) and generally a freaking nuisance
  
• was Guest of Honor at Odyssey Con and LepreCon, both of which were very cool
  
• began to have some success in managing my RLS, although it seems to take both drugs and acupuncture to keep the little dragons quiet (see above re: right lower appendage, cross-ref.: freaking nuisance)
  
• became gainfully employed outside academia for the first time since the summer of 1991
  
• survived the Great Sleep Deficit of 2011, which--much like the Great Ankle Debacle of 2010--we have vowed never to repeat
  
• got to do a whirlwind trip to Boston, which was awesome
  
• went to my first dressage schooling show and did okay
  
• continued to have chronic non-ulcerous dyspepsia and added in some irritable bowel just for fun
  
• slowly, slowly began to get my brain back

Also, I read a bunch of books:

• Ayçoberry, Pierre. The Social History of the Third Reich, 1933-1945. Transl. Janet Lloyd. New York: The New Press, 1999. (05/17)
  
• Baatz, Simon. For the Thrill of It: Leopold, Loeb, and the Murder that Shocked Chicago. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2008. (12/12)
  
• Begg, Paul. Jack the Ripper: The Definitive History. (05/04)
  
• Begg, Paul. Jack the Ripper: The Facts. (05/04)
  
• Brown, Arnold R. Lizzie Borden: The Legend, the Truth, the Final Chapter. Nashville, TN: Rutledge Hill Press, 1991. (04/21)
  
• Brustein, William. The Logic of Evil: The Social Origins of the Nazi Party, 1925-1933. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996. (03/09)
  
• Burrough, Bryan. Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-1934. New York: Penguin Books, 2004. (06/10)
  
• Cohen, Patricia Cline. The Murder of Helen Jewett: The Life and Death of a Prostitute in Nineteenth-Century New York. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998. (01/18)
  
• Deakin, F. W. The Brutal Friendship: Mussolini, Hitler and the Fall of Italian Fascism. 1962. London: Phoenix Press, 2000. (03/09)
  
• Douglas, John, and Mark Olshaker. The Cases That Haunt Us. New York: Lisa Drew-Scribner, 2000. (05/12)
  
• Duggan, Lisa. Sapphic Slashers: Sex, Violence, and American Modernity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000. (04/22)
  
• Evans, Richard J. Lying About Hitler: History, Holocaust, and the David Irving Trial. Basic Books-Perseus Books Group, 2001. (11/06)
  
• Evans, Stewart P., and Keith Skinner. Jack the Ripper: Letters from Hell. Phoenix Mill: Sutton Publishing Limited, 2001. (05/18)
  
• Fritzsche, Peter. Life and Death in the Third Reich. Cambridge, MA: Belknap-Harvard University Press, 2008. (05/17)
  
• Glass, James M. "Life Unworthy of Life": Racial Phobia and Mass Murder in Hitler's Germany. N.p.: New Republic-Basic Books, 1997. (03/15)
  
• Godbeer, Richard. The Devil's Dominion: Magic and Religion in Early New England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.(01/29)
  
• Kater, Michael H. Hitler Youth. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004. (01/09)
  
• Koch, H. W. Hitler Youth: The Duped Generation. Ballantine's Illustrated History of the Violent Century. New York: Ballantine Books, 1972. (03/09)
  
• Lambert, Angela. The Lost Life of Eva Braun. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2006. (05/01)
  
• Lincoln, Victoria. A Private Disgrace: Lizzie Borden by Daylight. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1967. (05/23)
  
• Masson, Jeffrey Moussaieff. Lost Prince: The Unsolved Mystery of Kaspar Hauser. New York: The Free Press-Simon & Schuster, 1996. (06/06)
  
• Overy, Richard. Interrogations: The Nazi Elite in Allied Hands, 1945. New York: Viking-Penguin Books, 2001. (03/09)
  
• Read, Anthony. The Devil's Disciples: Hitler's Inner Circle. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2004. (03/15)
  
• Roseman, Mark. The Villa, The Lake, The Meeting: Wannsee and the Final Solution. London: Penguin Books, 2003. (03/09)
  
• Rosenthal, Bernard. Salem Story: Reading the Witch Trials of 1692. Cambridge University Press, 1993. (04/05)
  
• Rumbelow, Donald. Jack the Ripper: The Complete Casebook. (05/04)
  
• Schneider, Paul. Bonnie and Clyde: The Lives Behind the Legend. New York: John MacRae-Henry Holt and Co., 2009. (06/04)
  
• Segrè, Claudio G. Italo Balbo: A Fascist Life. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987. (09/12)
  
• Sereny, Gitta. Cries Unheard: Why Children Kill: The Story of Mary Bell. 1998. New York: Owl Books-Henry Holt & Co., 2000. (12/12)
  
• Starr, Douglas. The Killer of Little Shepherds: A True Crime Story and the Birth of Forensic Science. New York: Vintage Books-Random House, 2010. (12/12)
  
• Sugden, Philip. The Complete History of Jack the Ripper. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1994. (05/19)
  
• Stannard, David E. The Puritan Way of Death: A Study in Religion, Culture, and Social Change. New York: Oxford University Press, 1977. (02/12)
  
• Trow, M. J. The Many Faces of Jack the Ripper. (05/04)
  
• Wallis, Michael. Pretty Boy: The Life and Times of Charles Arthur Floyd. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992. (07/10)
  
• Zierold, Norman. Little Charley Ross: The Shocking Story of America's First Kidnapping for Ransom. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1967. (06/06)

As 2012 begins, I'm going to full-time as a database thrall, and we'll see what effect that has on my health and my writing.

Goals for 2012 (note to self: do not mistype as "gaols," please) include:

• finish The Goblin Emperor
  
• write An Apprentice to Elves [with matociquala]
  
• finish Thirdhop Scarp and write this backlog of Booth stories
  
• write a bunch of other short stories
  
• maybe start on this novel that is twining seductively around my ankles
  
• blog more
  
• BE HEALTHY

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Happy New Year! May 2012 be a better year for all of us than 2011!

Comments

[heresluck]

Yay, books and stories! *beams at you*

If I were not so very fond of you, your reading list would probably freak me out, but as it is it just makes me laugh. Oh, you. And your brain.

Here's to a better 2012!