Happy New Year!

It’s 2023 and that means we get 365 new chances to live our best lives.

I’m starting 2023 with some good news—which is my favorite way to start a year. Just a couple of weeks ago I received notice that my story, “Splits,” had won my city’s annual short fiction award. It’s called the Short Works Prize - Freda Waldon Award for Fiction. Here’s a quote about the story from one of the judges:

If you haven’t yet read “Splits” but would like to, I’ve linked the issue of Cossmass Infinities it appeared in above or you can order a copy of their year-end anthology here.

A new year means resolutions for a lot of people. I’ve never been one for making resolutions, but I do set writing goals each year and try my best to work toward those.

This year my plan is to start the first draft of my novel. I mentioned in my last newsletter that I had an outline ready to go, but I was too busy reading for awards season (and dealing with the usual holiday stuff) to put any real effort into writing. With those things behind me, I plan to get started, and hopefully have a rough draft completed by the end of February.

I’m also participating in Codex’s “Weekend Warrior” flash fiction contest. This starts this month and since it’ll mostly involve writing over the weekends, it shouldn’t stop me from simultaneously working on the novel.

Something I didn’t mention last newsletter is that I’m also slowly putting together a short story collection. By this point in my career, I have enough published stories I feel I can include, so now it’s a matter of waiting for contract exclusivities to run out on a few of them, and of course getting the manuscript in shape to shop around. I’ll likely include a couple of never-before-published stories as well, as a bonus for readers.

I’ve also written a non-fiction piece that a well-known writing blog has expressed interest in, so I’m hoping to see that published this year some time. I’ll provide more details as things progress.

Finally, I want to try to make it to some writing conventions this year. Most will likely be online only, such as Flights of Foundry in April, and the Nebulas in May, but I’d like to try to make an in-person appearance at Canada’s Can*Con this October to meet up with some friends, if possible.

PUBLICATION UPDATE

I was supposed to start 2023 with my first publication of the year on January 1st in Abyss & Apex, but a couple of weeks ago I found out that a hard drive crash had messed some things up, which means my story, “The Procedure,” will now be published at a later date. Isn’t technology great? These things happen though, so I’ll update you when I have a new publication date for that story.  

FICTION SALES

Last month I mentioned my story, “El Bordado,” had sold, but I wasn’t yet able to announce the details of that sale. Now I can finally say that this story will appear in Flame Tree Press’s Immigrant Sci-Fi anthology, which will be published in March in the U.K. and April in North America. This is my second sale to Flame Tree Press, the first being my story, “Decorative,” published last year in their Compelling Science Fiction anthology (pictured below as spotted at my local bookstore). Both anthologies are part of their popular Gothic Fantasy series.

I also made one last fiction sale last year after the publication of my December newsletter, so this one wasn’t mentioned then. I’m now pleased to announce my fourth sale to Cossmass Infinities with, “The Bullet in My Pocket Has Your Name on It.” This is a science fiction short story about a protagonist with a grudge that’s the driving force as he moves through a post-disaster world.

FORTHCOMING PUBLICATIONS

The anthology Monstrous Futures is currently available for pre-order here.

INTERVIEWS

For my first interview of 2023, I’ve been invited to chat about fandoms and how being a science fiction fan has influenced my writing over the years. I’ll be speaking with the good people of The Halfling and the Spaceman podcast this month and will let you know when the episode goes live.

So that about covers my writing news for this month. Thanks again for reading. As always, like, subscribe, and share if you haven’t yet.

P.A. Cornell