My Writing Year 2021

As has become annual I thought I'd write a quick blog post as to my literary achievements during 2021.

Last year the majority of my time was spent writing a non-fiction book, which this year was accepted for publication although I'm not yet in a position to reveal any details, nor am I sure exactly when it might be published. However, with that now put to bed, I've returned to writing short fiction again this year, and also turned towards a publishing project.

Starting with the short fiction, I wrote the following stories: "The Redeemers", "Observations in Tenderness", "Something To Believe In", "Throttle Body", "Caboose", and "So Close To Home". This is about half my regular output, but I'm satisfied with those stories, four of which are already either now published or accepted for publication.

I sold six short stories this year. "Where Do Broken Dreams Go?" to the anthology titled Professor Charlatan Bardot's Travel Anthology To The Most (Fictional) Haunted Buildings In The Weird, Wide World (Dark Moon Books), "Mobster Thermidor" to Crimeucopia - As In Funny Ha-Ha, Or Just Peculiar (a crime anthology, from Murderous Ink Press), "Throttle Body" to nightjar press as a standalone chapbook, "Caboose" to the anthology, Railroad Tales (Midnight Street Press), "The Redeemers" for publication in Ars Gratia Sanguis from Black Shuck Books (part of their Great British Horror series), and "So Close To Home" will appear within a project I am yet at liberty to name.

The following seven stories were published this year: "All That Dead Beauty" in the anthology, Shadows From The Hillside (NewCon Press), "Messier 94", co-written with Eugen Bacon, appeared in her collection, Danged Black Thing (Transit Lounge Publishing), and "The Day The World Turned" in the anthology, No More Heroes (PS Publishing). Additionally, "Mobster Thermidor", "Caboose," "The Redeemers" and "Where Do Broken Dreams Go?" all appeared in the respective anthologies mentioned in the sales paragraph above.

Now, onto the publishing project I threw myself into, which was intended to reprint a couple of my previously published crime novels, but also to publish three more books I've written with the same PI, Mordent. These are neo-noir crime books. A blog post as to why I decided to self-publish these can be found here. The publishing company, Head Shot Press, who I've published these under (and will also be publishing other writers' works), can be found here. Because of this, the books I've had published this year number five in total: "The Immortalists" and "Church of Wire" (which are the reprints), "People I Know Are Dead" and "The Happy Finish" (two more Mordent novels), and "Dead Time" (a collection of Mordent short stories).

I have a handful of stories awaiting publication that were originally accepted in previous years, and a few other projects are also under consideration by various agents/publishers, as they were last year. 

So that's it for 2021, a year where the world began to get on track again, and within which I feel I found my feet again. Onwards to next year!