Is that a world you've got there, hidden under your hat?

I am having trouble remembering what happened to December. I'd blame it on the lack of reliable internet access for half the month, but right now I'm having the same problem with 2014. I can't argue that time has passed, however, because on top of the health problems I didn't have a year ago, once again it's end-of-year summary time and I have a list of publications.

For the first time since 2011, there was new fiction:

"The True Alchemist" in Not One of Us #51, April 2014.
"In Winter" in Lackington's #3, August 2014.
"Like Milkweed" in Not One of Us #52, October 2014.
"Anonymity" in Mythic Delirium 1.2, November 2014.
"The Boatman's Cure" in Ghost Signs, December 2014.

As well as poems:

"A Bulgakov Headache" in Stone Telling #10, January 2014.
"Clear" in Coping (ed. John Benson), January 2014.
"Defixio" in Coping (ed. John Benson), January 2014.
"In Conclusion" in Ideomancer 13.1, March 2014.
"Godfather Drosselmeyer" in Goblin Fruit #32, March 2014.
"Facilior" in inkscrawl #7, April 2014.
"Aristeia" in Apex Magazine #59, April 2014.
"The Etruscan Prince" in The Cascadia Subduction Zone 4.2, April 2014.
"Similes" in Not One of Us #51, April 2014.
"Double Business" in Interfictions #3, May 2014.
"Poor Old Horse" in Mythic Delirium 1.1, September 2014.
"The Antiquities of Herculaneum" in Not One of Us #52, October 2014.
"The Excavation of Troy" in Apex Magazine #65, October 2014.
"Sometimes the Birds, at Random" in Through the Gate #5, October 2014.
"Last Letters" in Through the Gate #5, October 2014.
"The Whalemaid, Singing" in Uncanny Magazine #1, November 2014.
"Red Is for Soldiers" in Ghost Signs, December 2014.
"Ghost Signs" in Ghost Signs, December 2014.
"After the Red Sea" in Goblin Fruit #35, December 2014.

There were even some reprints:

"Moving Nameless" in King David and the Spiders from Mars (ed. Tim Lieder), March 2014.
"Sedna" in Mythic Delirium #30 (ed. Mike and Anita Allen), April 2014.
"Kaddish for a Dybbuk" in Mythic Delirium #30 (ed. Mike and Anita Allen), April 2014.
"A Find at Þingvellir" in Drawn to Marvel: Poems from the Comic Books (ed. Bryan D. Dietrich and Marta Ferguson), April 2014.
"Cuneiform Toast" in Mythic Delirium (ed. Mike and Anita Allen), November 2014.
"Aranea" (with Mike Allen) in Hungry Constellations, November 2014.
"The King of Cats, the Queen of Wolves" (with Mike Allen and Nicole Kornher-Stace) in Hungry Constellations, November 2014.

And some assorted nonfiction:

"Defining Speculative Poetry: A Conversation and Three Manifestos" (with Adrienne J. Odasso and Romie Stott) in Strange Horizons, February 2014.
"ST Body Interviews: Sonya Taaffe" in Stone Telling Blog, May 2014.
"I Can Hardly Believe It Happened: Terence Fisher's The Brides of Dracula" in Weird Fiction Review (ed. Adam Mills), June 2014.

And this, which matters so much to me:

Ghost Signs, Aqueduct Press, January 2015 (copies received December 2014, like a last gift from the old year).

I don't count unpublished work in these summaries, but I want to note that I've written nine pieces of fiction so far this year. Most of them were flash, but three were full-length stories and there are another three or four in progress. Some have been placed, one was published, the rest are still looking for homes, but the point is that they exist. Last year there were five. There was one in 2012 and it was fanfiction. Cautiously, these numbers matter to me. It is very difficult for me right now not to feel like some nightmarish counterfeit of myself, but whatever else has gone wrong with me, I am writing. That has to count for something.

No radio this year. Well, then, 2015.

I'm out of my life tonight

For the last day of 2014, I went out to Cambridge to meet a visiting yhlee and Joe. There was an entertaining moment of missed connection as we all failed to realize that Kendall Square contains two Marriotts, both on Broadway and separated from one another by about a block, but we managed to find each other outside of Meadhall and proceeded with our plans for lunch at the Ames Street Deli.

It's a new restaurant; it belongs to the founders of Journeyman and Backbar and shares a kitchen with their other new restaurant Study, which we wandered into by mistake. (There were not clearly-marked signs! The bathrooms for both restaurants are in Study! Nice to find out the other place is there, though.) From the street, it looks coffeehouse-ish, with tall glass walls and a visible internal theme of blackboards. Their sidewalk chalkboard on one side invites the passer-by to "Come for the coffee . . . stay for the beards"; on the other, it advertises a meta-cocktail made of "artisanal booze, obscure liqueur, homemade bitters, bizarre garnish," which I appreciate almost more than I can say. There is a full bar inside. Also columns padded with dry moss and hammered copper plates hanging above the pastries like a sound effect in waiting.

I ordered the rabbit sandwich, because I have a moral imperative to eat that sort of thing. It is rabbit mortadella and it comes on savory carrot bread with finely shredded carrots and mustard. It is extremely delicious; I was glad to see that one of the other sandwiches of the day contained beef heart, because otherwise I could see myself never trying anything else. (I am beginning to think that rabbit, like goat, is one of those meats that can do no wrong unless you are actively working to screw it up.) The sandwiches are small, so the waitstaff recommend ordering a salad on the side to make up a full meal. To give you an idea of what the Ames Street Deli considers "salad," Yoon and I both accompanied our rabbit with croque madame. It's exactly what you're thinking, only cubed and served in a small side bowl. Was also pretty tasty. Joe ordered the char sandwich, which came topped with rust-green seaweed on nori-dusted bread, and a salad with endive and pomegranate seeds.

swan_tower, Tse Wei came by and said hello and brought us dessert! Like, kouign amann and canelés and a kind of shortbread layered with passionfruit and chocolate. I am hoping I said suitably grateful rather than stupefied things. They were lovely desserts and a completely unexpected visit.

(We destroyed a lot of flatware, because the current set is compostable and this is ecologically compassionate, but doesn't hold up to a lot of psi.¹ At first we thought Joe was just snapping the forks with his astrophysicist super-strength, but as we kept trying to share the desserts, none of them survived intact. Heads, tines, handles; it was a massacre. I believe Yoon took pictures. [edit] Photographic evidence!)

Afterward we wanted somewhere warm to hang out, which is where a knowledge of nearby coffeeshops would have come in handy. Lacking a caffeine compass, we ended up at the MIT Press Bookstore, where I confined myself to leaving with the paperback of George Dyson's Turing's Cathedral (2012) and snarling slightly about the cover sticker linking it to The Imitation Game (2014). Sadly, the book titled Trust Me, I'm Lying was a memoir about social media manipulation (much less interesting to me than other kinds of fakery). Eventually Yoon and Joe went in the direction of First Night; I went back to Somerville to pick up derspatchel and head to Lexington for dinner and fondue with my family. It was a really, really nice way to see out the year, at least the daytime part of it. Yoon brought me a CD of The Descent of Inanna. I finally found out what Joe does for a living, which is very cool science. Yoon's gloves are one of the best wearable in-jokes I have seen.

And I came home and opened the box from Aqueduct Press which had appeared on my porch as I left the house this afternoon. It contains five author's copies of Ghost Signs and thirty copies for sale at Arisia and elsewhere. They are beautiful books. They have weight. Publication online is not a false thing, but it is important to me to have words I can hold in my hands. I can carry these. So can other people.

Happy New Year.

1. Pounds per square inch. I looked at that sentence again and it's a lot more exciting when read like science fiction.