New in 2024

(old news, judging by the calendar)

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By no means a massive year for me, but I’m pretty pleased with what came out, even if the total number of entries is just okay.

First, let’s mention the novella “The Price of Meat," published in Malice by Dragon Soul Press back in October (amazon). I’ve already written at length about this piece, so I’ll refrain from saying more now.

I have not already written about August’s “The Orgasmic Orchestra" (The Alien Buddha #3: The Final Track—amazon) because I’m waiting for its companion piece to arrive so I can write about them together. I think that will be in January? For now, I guess I can just say it’s exactly what it sounds like?

“The Hunger of Ghosts” was written for (and rejected by) a kickstarted anthology back in 2020, but finally found a home on its fourth trip out of the house in Ghostly from Lintusen Press in September (amazon, bookshop).

If you pay close attention, you may have caught this conversation I had with one of the other authors, a friend of mine. (Don’t miss her new MLB story!)

Mine is a story about haunted pens and it begins with this: My grandmama taught me something about craftsmen.

On to poetry!

• Filming the Gods at Ground Level (Triggerfish Critical Review in January) *read*
• Seven Short Monologues for Palm Sunday (Bay Area Council for Latter-day Saint Studies: Palm Sunday Musical Devotional in March) *read* *watch*
• Outlaw Diary (Defenestration in August 2024) *read*
• Homesteaders (Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought in Fall) *read*

“Monologues” was commissioned (thank you, BACLDSS), but the other three had been previously rejected, respectively, 8, 1, and 4 times. You might think the 8 is therefore the weaker poem. But that number’s a sign that I think it’s pretty good. Why else keep sending it out?

Of course, I may be wrong. Of all the things I know I should be skeptical about, my own opinions on my own poetry is quite a large one.

This year I was also on the Mormons Who Are Making Comics panel at San Diego Comic-Con International with Trevor Alvord, Camilla Stark, and Matt Page. Always fun to go to Comic-Con. And we always get a good crowd.

Accepted but not out yet, expect stories (“I Dreamed of Oil,” “A Mouse’s Tale,” and “Vomit Was Never the Problem”), poems (“(better sleep in the cold)” and “(atonement poem)”), and some scholarship “Allusions to Restoration Scripture in the Novels of Nephi Anderson (with Jacob Ahana-Laba). Fingers crossed they all come to life in 2025.

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