Matt Dovey's Blog

It's Been a While

Man, I am bad at updating this website. I mean, I have low expectations of myself, but even then I am limboing under them like a champ. Anyway. In brief, for posterity:

2022: the Year the Years Caught Up

I usually have complicated feelings about awards season, but they're much easier this year: I didn't have anything published this year. Nothing. Not a thing. That's the first year since I was published that I haven't been published. I guess I should dig into that, as self-forgiveness if nothing else.

ephemera post-reading... post

If I have cast the bones correctly, this post should be magically going up just as ephemera 27: Companionship is starting on YouTube. My theory being, hopefully, that you're coming here to get the rest of the story I just read a bit of! In which case GOOD NEWS I have foreseen your need and prepared links for you: you can read the story in text here; if you want to carry on where I left off, start from here. if you'd prefer to continue in audio, you can listen to Matthew James Hamblin's narration for Podcastle here or anywhere you'd normally grab a podcast--look for episode 667 in your podcatcher/Spotify/iTunes/etc. Pick up where I left off from 16m47s. Did you miss the live reading? WELL GOOD NEWS FOR YOU TOO the video is on YouTube and I've embedded it for you after the jump:

ephemera Reading - 16th Feb

The ephemera reading series has been run by Jen R. Albert and KT Bryski for a few years now, and featured some incredible writers during that time. Rather excitingly, I'm now going to be one of them. ephemera 27: Companionship will be live on YouTube on Wednesday 16th February at 7pm EST (so 0:00 Thursday 17th Feb UTC--going to be a late night for me) and will also feature readings by Vanessa Fogg and Tiffany Morris, plus a visual performance by Illestpreacha. I'll be reading a flash story and an excerpt of a longer story; you should come watch, so you too can find out if I can pull off wearing my usual waistcoat-and-tie writer uniform over pyjama bottoms.

Clouds in a Clear Blue Sky on the BSFA Longlist

Well, this was an unexpected surprise this morning. Clouds in a Clear Blue Sky, as published in PodCastle episode #667 last year, is on the BSFA longlist for Best Short Fiction. This is my first time on the BSFA longlist, and it means a lot that a story so deliberately soaked in Britishness has found itself on a British longlist. BSFA members can vote on the list from now until February 21st.

2021 in Stories

The lag in publishing is a funny old thing. To wit: I've not done any new writing since about Easter 2019, thanks to real life, and yet in 2021 I had four new originals come out, which were--in my estimation--probably my best work.

The Cloud Factory

All things being equal, I have a new story out in Podcastle this week: Clouds in a Clear Blue Sky. It is, I think, the best thing I've done since The Bone Poet & God, and I'm nervous and excited in equal measure for you all to hear it. The first draft got started with an 800 word intro that eventually got cut for word count reasons, but remains the seed of the story and something I can't let go of. It never made sense for it to go back on the beginning of the narrative proper, as it just slowed down the start, but it works pretty well as a teaser, so in anticipation of the publication of Clouds in a Clear Blue Sky, please enjoy this 4 minute prologue: The Cloud Factory.

2020: The Year That Wasn't

Well. I'm glad to see the back of those twelve months, how about you? I don't do awards eligibility posts anyway, but even if I did 2020 was basically a pause year for my writing for multiple real life reasons, of which a once-in-a-century global pandemic was only one. In all honesty I've hardly written anything new for going on two years now. Which is to say: about the amount of time we've been fighting our local education authority to get an appropriate school placement for our youngest child and his autistic needs. Funny how dealing with the bureaucracy required to secure your child's entire future and current happiness leaves you without the time or emotional energy to write. But some stuff still happened this year! To wit:

On 2019, and awards, and the stupid ways my brain works

This is an awards post. This is not an awards post. I've been putting this off for ages (I'm what, two months past everyone else?) because I don't know how to write it. But maybe I just need to write it and accept that it will be as messy and tangled as my thoughts on the subject. Here is the lede unburied: I am not putting myself forward for awards consideration any more. Though I'm not going to decline nominations, or be displeased in the slightest, or stop rounding up what I achieved in a year. Messy and tangled.

Collected Updates

It's August, and I've made zero new posts so far this year. Ouch. In my defence, it has been a year. As was 2018. As was 2017. Hmm. But it'll let up at some point, right? Right? Herewith, then, a few overdue updates collected together as briefly as I can manage (he says, laughing)