I'm singing through the roughest storm

[sovay]

In many ways, I can barely think about this year. Aside from the general state of plague, it was marked by ill health sufficient to smash my day-to-day life in a way that has not been true in fifteen years. I was part of more than one literary project which fell through. A secret project on which I began work over the summer has not yet come to fruition. I maintained my website and added to my store on AO3 and I have some poems looking for homes and some acceptances waiting on the new year and I am here and my cats are here and my family is here, which will have to stand in for all the rest. They are not small things.

I had no new fiction published this year. There was new poetry, some of it quite important to me:

"The Bargain" in Not One of Us #65, January 2021.
"The Keystone Out of Your Arch" in Climbing Lightly Through Forests: A Poetry Anthology Honoring Ursula K. Le Guin (ed. R.B. Lemberg and Lisa M. Bradley), Aqueduct Press, February 2021.
"Colonial" in Mithila Review #15, March 2021.
"Volta do Mar" in Not One of Us #66, March 2021.
"Narcissus in London" in Not One of Us #67, June 2021.
"Fascination" in Not One of Us #68, September 2021.
"Every Night and All" in Nightmare Magazine #109, October 2021.
"Plures" in microverses 12/30/21, December 2021.
"Digging In" in microverses 12/30/21, December 2021.

Reprints were minimal but treasured:

"The Other Lives" in Climbing Lightly Through Forests: A Poetry Anthology Honoring Ursula K. Le Guin (ed. R.B. Lemberg and Lisa M. Bradley), Aqueduct Press, February 2021.
"It's Good to Know How the World Works: Star Trek: Voyager's 'Jetrel'" in The Stellar Beacon #4: The Trickster Issue, May 2021.
"Tea with the Earl of Twilight" in The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: Volume Two (ed. Paula Guran), Pyr Books, October 2021.

I wrote one piece of fanfiction:

"Longing, Rusted, Seventeen" (The Falcon and the Winter Soldier), July 2021.

And so much less than I wanted for Patreon:

A Doll's House (1973), January 2021.
"Jetrel" (Star Trek: Voyager, 1995), January 2021.
Get Crazy (1983), February 2021.
Black Cat 'Thon 2021 [Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century (1953), Escape to Witch Mountain (1975), Matinee (1993), The Hands of Orlac (Orlacs Hände, 1924), The Brother from Another Planet (1984), The Silent Star (Der schweigende Stern, 1960), Fantastic Planet (La Planète sauvage, 1973), "Homecoming" (2005), Born in Flames (1983), Prospect (2018), Cherry 2000 (1987), The Atomic Submarine (1959), Destroy All Monsters (怪獣総進撃, 1968)], February 2021.
The Lost Patrol (1934), March 2021.
The Verdict (1946), April 2021.
The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945), April 2021.
"And So Died Riabouchinska" (Alfred Hitchcock Presents, 1956), May 2021.
The Feminine Touch (1941), May 2021.
Three Live Ghosts (1936), June 2021.
Guilty Bystander (1950), July 2021.
Four Frightened People (1934), July 2021.
South of Algiers (1953), August 2021.
Cloudburst (1951), September 2021.
Hell Bound (1957), October 2021.
Strange Bargain (1949), October 2021.
Occupy! (1976), October 2021.
In the Earth (2021), October 2021.
MirrorMask (2005), November 2021.
The Wipers Times (2013), November 2021.
The Dance of Shiva (1998), November 2021.
The Banishing (2020), December 2021.
Try and Get Me! (1950), December 2021.
Fish Story (2017), December 2021.
Lola Montès (1955), December 2021.

It doesn't really feel safe to wish for a better year as I have done for countless years now, but I certainly don't want a worse one. Health. Strength. More than survival. Mir zaynen do, mir veln zayn do. Af tselokhes.

Comments

[radiantfracture]

Your words, many or few (and these seem like many to me!) mean a lot to me, this year and every year.

[sovay]

Your words, many or few (and these seem like many to me!) mean a lot to me, this year and every year.

Thank you. I do take that seriously. It is hard for me not to see all the things I wanted to do and couldn't.

[radiantfracture]

Of course -- and I do not mean by this praise to somehow elide your struggle, only to say that you made something of meaning despite this harrowing.

[nineweaving]

That is an extraordinary body of work. May this coming year bring a harvest of words.

Nine

[sovay]

That is an extraordinary body of work. May this coming year bring a harvest of words.

Thank you.

*hugs*

[thisbluespirit]

Congratulations on still being here! So am I. *nods*

I think I'll risk wishing you a much better new year anyway, because we may as well still hope for it. It could happen! ♥

[sovay]

Congratulations on still being here! So am I.

I'm glad! I appreciate your continued hereness.

I think I'll risk wishing you a much better new year anyway, because we may as well still hope for it. It could happen!

Fair enough!

*hugs*

[thawrecka]

I am once again very glad to have spent another year reading your posts.

[sovay]

I am once again very glad to have spent another year reading your posts.

Thank you. Likewise!

[asakiyume]

Your accomplishments always seem myriad and splendid to me, but I realize they seem different from behind your eyes. I look forward with pleasure to your presence in 2022.

[sovay]

Your accomplishments always seem myriad and splendid to me, but I realize they seem different from behind your eyes.

It was just a very bad year for wanting to do things and not being well enough to. I have a lot of difficulty associated with that.

I look forward with pleasure to your presence in 2022.

Thank you.

[gwynnega]

Judging by this list, it was an excellent year of writing and publishing. I look forward to what you will write and publish in 2022. (It seems wearying to wish for a better year, but I will wish it nonetheless!)

[sovay]

Judging by this list, it was an excellent year of writing and publishing. I look forward to what you will write and publish in 2022.

Thank you. I am working on seeing what I did, not what I hoped to.

(It seems wearying to wish for a better year, but I will wish it nonetheless!)

Maybe it will finally take!

[pameladean]

Nobody else could have written any of those things, and I am so glad that you did. It looks like a great plenty to me, but of course I know you have a very different perspective, as the artist always has.

I am glad you are here and I don't think it is at the end of all things.

P.

[sovay]

I am glad you are here and I don't think it is at the end of all things.

*hugs*

Thank you. You, too, and I certainly hope not.

[konstantya]

I'm excited to see an end-of-the-year round-up of your writing! I'll have to make my way through (at the very least) some of the Patreon posts I missed. Happy New Year, in any event (for whatever that's worth, heh). <3

[sovay]

I'm excited to see an end-of-the-year round-up of your writing! I'll have to make my way through (at the very least) some of the Patreon posts I missed.

Thank you! I hope you enjoy!

Happy New Year, in any event (for whatever that's worth, heh).

We're still here. That has to be worth something. Happy New Year!