2014

The most important event in my life this year was the death of my grandfather in April, which was doubly sad as he did not meet Oliver before passing. We've seen been to Florida twice to visit other relatives including my grandmother, and enjoyed both trips.

This year we also lost Jay Lake, who was a friendly acquaintance and my co-editor for Spicy Slipstream Stories —all the royalties to which (not a lot, ~$100 a year) I signed over to his estate. I was also sad to see writer J.F. Gonzalez, whom I met a few times, pass. My former co-worker Courtney Utt also passed. When I first started working at Team Rocket, she sat me down and taught me a liquid ton about design. Her work on The Book of Heroes (check out her essay here) is one of my favorite things I've been a part of.

Oliver is doing very well—he's walking and is musical and is beginning to cough up some words and signs. I'm looking forward to his continuing development. It'll be very interesting to meet the human being he is becoming.

I was fairly productive in both sections of my professional life. This summer my sister and I attended the world premiere of Edge of Tomorrow, which I'd helped midwife from its days as the novel All You Need Is Kill —the mass-market edition of which became the first work of adult science fiction in translation to hit the #1 spot on Bookscan's SF bestseller list in the Bookscan era. I wrote the Western graphic novel of All You Need Is Kill , and though fans preferred the simultaneously released manga edition the project did earn me a guest of honor berth at the Vegas Valley Comic Book Festival—it was a blast to celebrate Oliver's first birthday in Vegas.

I did two other my-name-on-'em books for my day job as well: the non-fiction anthology The Battle Royale Slam Book , which includes an essay by Sam Hamm that is worth the price alone, and Phantasm Japan . Both of these were co-edited by Haikasoru's editor-in-chief, Masumi Washington. Given the Hugo Awards and how promotion is not just common but mandatory for political/culture war reasons, I'll start promoting Edge for Best Dramatic Long Form, and Project Itoh's "From the Nothingness, With Love" from Phantasm Japan for Best Novelette pretty soon, I guess. I blame the liberal left for this.

Two books of my own came out this year: my novel The Last Weekend was released in the United Kingdom as a hardcover via PS Publications. Since I just signed the contracts this evening, I'll tell you that Skyhorse/Start will be bringing out a US paperback and ebook in 2015. My Lovecraftian collection The Nickronomicon was released last month, and a bunch of you bought it, thanks! It includes a brand-new novelette "On the Occasion of My Retirement."

With my friend Alexandra Kostoulas, I co-hosted and co-curated two Greek American Writers Nights, one at the art/performance space The Emerald Tablet in North Beach, and one in conjunction with San Francisco State University's Modern Greek Studies Program. I was also let go by The Writing Salon, where I've been teaching for four years, and will bring my class over to Alexandra's new outfit in 2015. I taught at both residencies at Western Connecticut State University's MFA program in Professional Writing, and taught two online classes at LitReactor.com. I spoke on a panel about genre fiction at the Associated Writing Programs annual conference in Seattle. Many put-upon undergraduates were excited to hear what we had to say.


My 2007 novel Under My Roof was optioned back in 2010, and the option was renewed in 2013. in July, I got the email—the project was a go. Casting happened in September and October, and test footage was shot last week. Shooting begins next month, right after the holidays. A check is en route to my agent.

I published a number of short stories this year, mostly in anthologies, and across a few genres.

Crime story "If Graffiti Changed Anything, It Would Be Illegal" appeared in Schemers, a mostly UK/mostly science fiction/fantasy anthology.

Horror story "Exit Through the Gift Shop" appeared in Searchers After Horror, from a press and by writers and an editor mostly associated with Lovecraft, but this was not a Lovecraftian anthology. I liked this story a lot, and hope some of you check it out.

The pornographic flash fiction "The Third Plug" appeared in The Big Book of Submission, edited by my old LJ/New York pal Rachel Kramer Bussel.

A realist fiction, called "Slice of Life", which I read at KGB Bar back in January of 2013, appeared in this year's number of the literary journal Gargoyle, #61 to be specific.

"Burning Stones", a Bradburyesque fantasy I wrote for Oliver, appeared in Lamplight Vol. 3, no. 1. I also read it at this year's LitCrawl, and at the SFSU event.

"Der Kommissar's In Town", a fantasy-noir, appeared in Streets of Shadows, an anthology of the same.

"Work, Shoot, Hook, Rip" was a straightforward noir in Ellen Datlow's Nightmare Carnival, an anthology of otherwise supernatural stories of horrific and fantastical carnivals and circuses. If the title doesn't give it away, my story is about professional wrestling.

I'm told that two other stories have appeared, and I've seen people waving around copies of the books in which they appear on Facebook, but I haven't received my own copies or seen them in stores yet. Both are Lovecraftian:

"Black Book of the Skull [Mαύρο βιβλίο του κρανίου]” is in The Starry Wisdom Library, which is a fun high-concept book designed to look like a real auction catalog. (Here's a little blurb about it from Fine Books & Collections.)

"The Semi-Finished Basement" appears in Letters to Lovecraft, published mostly in the UK. The gimmick here is that all the contributors took a line or two from Supernatural History in Literature and wrote our stories as a riff on the text.

I had a few pieces of non-fiction published this year as well. For The Smart Set, I looked at Harlan Ellison's recent publications and HE yelled at me. To support The Nickronomicon, I wrote two essays on Lovecraft. For SFSignal, I asked Why Write Lovecraftian Fiction? (it's really about racism), and for the Los Angeles Review of Books I shoved my way into a long-standing discussion about popular versus difficult writing and carved out a space for Lovecraft as "a difficult writer."

One poem, "Landmark (After Hitchcock)", appeared in the Greek-American literary journal Φωνές.

I also finished and sold a few other stories, and have to finish a mystery novel that Skyhorse will also be putting out...but that's 2015!