This year feels like it’s both flown by and dragged on forever. Life for me has been interesting and complicated.

The biggest change this year was that I went from working in an office most days to working at home; at the same time I went from sitting at a desk all day to using a treadmill desk. While I’m still at the same job, I’m doing very different things now. I started the year primarily doing research, and am now involved in a number of different aspects of development, support, and even sales.

Like all big changes, this has been both good and bad and just strange. On the one hand, on a day to day level I’m quite a bit more isolated; on the other hand I talk to people all over the world by phone, and occasionally travel. The pace has also picked up a lot, with the last few months being extremely busy to the point that I’ve basically gotten nothing else done. (Add to that a two-week cold with laryngitis and a wisdom tooth extraction, BTW)

This has been a good year for my fiction, though, reaping what I sowed in past years. The big news, of course, is the publication of my novella Claudius Rex in the Alembical 3 anthology from Paper Golem Press. (Links in sidebar) I also had a number of short stories come out this year:

• No Body in Penumbra
• Ransomware in Daily Science Fiction
• Still Life, With Orange in Lakeside Circus

In addition to that, a story I wrote in blind collaboration with five other authors (Crowd Control) came out in Perihelion.

Finally, I self-published the first of a planned series of short SF mysteries, Death in a Tin Can.

On the side, I attended Arisia for the first time this past year (and had a blast) and was interviewed about my fiction for the Sci Fi Saturday Night podcast.

Of course, that’s all reaping the rewards of past years’ writing. It’s a bit like farming: you plant in one season, and the results bear fruit down the road. It never entirely makes sense to just look at one year in isolation. Having been so busy this year means that next year is likely to be a bit slower. I sold many of the sellable stories I had, and didn’t replenish the stock as quickly. This is not to say that I got nothing done. I finished a novel, A Death in Deep Space, and am in the process of shopping that around. I selected the short mysteries to edit and package to self-publish. I polished a novella that’s been ready to send out again for a while. And I made an audio sale that hasn’t come out yet. All in all, I’m hopeful for a good 2015.