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Tuesday, January 1, 2013

It All Starts Again

Why hello 2013.

Another year has arrived without much fanfare, as is usually the case for me. I'm not a big party animal, or a big drinker, so this time of the year tends to be a relaxed event for me. While Jen was out all night at a costume party, I was on the couch, having a beer or three and watching 666 Park Avenue.

So, writing wise, what happened in 2012:

An extract of my thesis, "Tekeli-li! Disturbing Language in Edgar Allan Poe and H. P. Lovecraft", was published in the Lovecraft Annual #6, edited by S.T. Joshi.

The essay I wrote on Kathe Koja's fantastic short story, "Angels in Love", was published at Weird Fiction Review Online as part of their ongoing review of the 101 stories in The Weird anthology.

I did find time to write some short fiction in 2012. This included "Fluke", published in Tales from the Bell Club, March 2012.

I sold two stories that will be published in 2013:  "The Flood" will be published in Nameless Magazine (ed. Jason V. Brock), while "Linguistica Obscura" will appear in #4 of the annual Weird Fiction Review (ed. S.T. Joshi).

"Into the Black Abyss" (originally published in Something Wicked #15, November 2011), was published in Something Wicked's first volume of short stories, showcasing the writing of South African and international genre writers.

Periphery, a Lambda Award finalist in 2009, was re-released by Untreed Reads. Check out a recent in-depth review at Future Fire.

What's in store for 2013, then?

I have to finish my novel. How long have I been saying this? Too long. In-between finishing a Masters degree, and being an academic proofreader, my time has been, to say the least, limited. Also, the damn thing scares me. Ridiculous. The 60 000 words I have down feels incomplete, unstructured, and sometimes just plain BAD. I know that every writer feels like this at some point and it's something I simply have to get over. If there was a pill for it, I'd have swallowed one ages ago. Honestly, some days it's like trying to chew rocks.

On the academic side, I'm researching a 6000 word essay on the Lovecraftian aesthetic in the Hellboy films for a special Lovecraft-themed edition of the Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, edited by Jeffrey A. Weinstock and  Carl Sederholm. Due date is October 2013, so plenty of time to get the research cogs turning.

For Weird Fiction Review Online, I'm researching an essay on A. Merritt's "The People of the Pit". This is part of an ongoing series of essays, each focusing on a story collected in the ground breaking anthology The Weird, edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer.

Sekrit Project in development. More info hopefully soon.

Considering doing a PhD.

Aside from work, I hope that 2013 will be a good year for the human race. Something needs to change. And quickly.

Namaste.

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