News from the desk I’m currently chained to

Hello! Now you may have noticed that I have been absent since October. This is because I’ve been very very busy. As such, I would like to correct the following rumours:

1. I was not ‘buried in an avalanche’ and it was not ‘just what he (I) deserved’. The snow in Berlin is not that deep, and at worst I deserve slipping on some ice and falling down a small flight of stairs.

2. I did not ‘get involved in organised crime and become a Mafia don’ nor did I ‘first fight my way through the ranks of a Chinese crime syndicate’. Like the rest of my life, my crimes are disorganised.

3. I did not ‘get extensive plastic surgery to look like Nick from the Jonas Brothers so I could dance for coins on Venice Beach’. I have never been to Los Angeles, and if I were to have plastic surgery it would be to look like Mystique from X-Men, so I could then shapeshift into whomever I wanted.

So rather than talk about the things I vehemently deny and probably didn’t happen, here is a list of things that did.

My novel ‘Forget Yourself’ was released by Lethe Press!

The new edition has an awesome new cover, and is available both in bookstores and the following places online:

Lethe Press

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Smashwords

Hive

And many other places! For more information, check out my novels page. Remember, strange science fiction always makes a great present for friends, neighbours, and confused strangers! In short: YAY.

My novel The Giddy Death of the Gays & the Strange Demise of Straights (a title my publisher describes as ‘untweetable’) has received positive reviews and is up for two awards

The reception for The Giddy Death has been wonderful, and I’m happy to announce it received good reviews from Lambda Literary, The American Library Association, My Gay Toronto, Out in Print, Kirkus, Illiteraty, GA Bixler, and writer Rebekka Steg.

It’s also up for the Lambda Literary Award (against the likes of Jeanette Winterson – eek!), and the Bisexual Book Award. Fingers (and any other possible appendages) crossed!

I’ll be giving a reading from The Giddy Death at Other Nature Berlin on February 8th!

If you’re in Berlin, please come along and give your enthusiastic (or at least, lukewarm) support. I will reward you with some free words and a hug. More information is available here.

A sequal to my short story ‘Liquid Loyalty’ was published in The Future Fire X – the ten year anniversary anthology of The Future Fire

The piece, which takes the form of poetry rather than prose, looks at the first story ten years after it ends. For info on the anthology and where to get a copy, visit the official site. For more information on this and ‘Liquid Loyalty’, take a look at my short stories page.

I’ve written the afterword for the upcoming Threesome: Him, Him, and Me anthology!

It’s titled ‘Greedy, Deviant, and Perverse: Living and Writing a Trio Relationship’ and I’m very pleased to have been asked to write it. Coming this March!

I’ve been working with both Guernica and PEN America as a reader!

I’m very happy to have been working with both these organisations, one for fiction, the other nonfiction. Not only have I had the opportunity to read some wonderful pieces of writing, but it also fulfills my secret desire to judge others (not really; sort of; not really).

I was interviewed on Berlin’s radio station Alex, for the Schlampenreport.

It was my first time doing a radio interview, and I managed not to make a complete fool of myself. Many thanks to hosts Daniel Aldridge and Ian Hansen.

I was invited as a guest speaker for UCL Debating Society’s debate ‘This House Regrets Monogamy’

It was an honour to be invited, and I had a lot of fun–not least because I wound up arguing for the audience to abstain on the vote rather than trying to get them to vote in proposition like I was supposed to. And abstain won! It was a great sign for all those who believe people should be free to live and love as they want, be it via monogamy or polyamory.

I spoke at the University of Lisbon’s ‘Nonmonogamies and Contemporary Intimacies’ conference

I gave a paper on polyamory in science fiction, looking at Robert Heinlein and Marge Piercy’s work. The conference was a fantastic mixture of academics, activists, and artists, and it was a great opportunity to hear on polyamory and other forms of alternate love from around Europe and the wider world.

I’m on the review committee for UC Berkeley’s International Conference on the Future of Monogamy and Nonmonogamy

Something else it’s an honour to be involved with, and I’m pleased to be able to help raise the profile of alternative relationships.

I have another upcoming review for Strange Horizons

Reviewing Dave Huthinson’s Europe At Midnight. Check out my Facebook fan page for info on when that’s out. In the meantime, I wrote a short piece for Strange Horizons’ 2015 Year in Review:

“I have to talk about Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time (1976). The latter half of the twentieth century may have seen utopian fiction take a backseat to its neon-fronted cyberpunk cousins, but Piercy’s work stands out in providing a vision of a world free of prejudice, inequality, and environmental destruction. Tying in themes of racial oppression, abuse of women, poverty, and even ageism, Woman on the Edge of Time provides an intersectional feminist reading of society’s ills decades before those words fell from the mouths of a million Millennials.”

Read the rest here.

I wrote this blog update

Which is less exciting than all the others, perhaps, but it pleases me. With that I shall leave you with a picture of me next to slightly younger me, that my face may haunt your dreams and provide comfort until the next post.