Paper Fruit

Welp, we’re surging toward the end of the year, so it’s time for…some End of Year Thoughts!

This year is ending better than it began, in spite of in spite of *waves hand at the world.* After all, it began with Toad passing away on the fifth of January—unexpected, but not entirely surprising given his age and lifestyle. Also unexpected: I abandoned the novel I’ve been working on for years instead of finishing it, which was not the plan for 2024, but I do think it’s for the best.

In the wake of stepping back from my previous project, I started on a new novel. I’m pleased to report it’s going great. I’m also pleased to report that I had a better writing year this year than I’ve had in a long, long time. I published two short stories, “Eight Wedding Rings from Unhappy Marriages” in the Sunday Morning Transport, and “Jirel and the Mirror of Truth” in New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine #3. This was meaningful for me, because the last story I had published was all the way back in 2022. Also in terms of writing, I wrote two novelettes and sold both of them, one a sapphic sword & sorcery psycho-epic to the fantasy magazine Beneath Ceaseless Skies; the other, “The Best in Basement Radio,” a non-speculative story to the crime anthology 120 Murders. Both of those will be out next year. I also sold my novella And Side By Side They Wander to Tordotcom, and that’ll be out in 2026. I have other irons in the fire, too, including some exciting audio stuff.

In terms of other professional accomplishments, I did another SFWA mentorship, which we both came away feeling was successful, and I was part of the jury for the final year of the Kitschie Awards. I’ll be doing more award reading next year, and I’m excited for that! I was invited back to Sycamore Hill, and that’s where I workshopped “The City of Tears,” the story I sold to BCS. I did some cons—ICFA, WorldCon, and the HP Lovecraft Film Festival, and was invited to collaborate with energy researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado Springs on speculating about energy futures.

In terms of my “day job” I also had a good year, including receiving an award nomination as part of the team that worked on Orochi, by the late Kazuo Umezz.

In terms of non-professional stuff…I had a lot of things go wrong with my house this year, including an unwanted raccoon in my shed. So, that took up some mental space and dollars. But, I think my dwelling is in a better place, and so I am I. I made some positive health changes this year, in terms of my physical and mental health. I started journaling, which has been life-changing. Without a cat to need me, I traveled: I traveled to see people, I traveled for work, I traveled with my mom, I traveled with friends, I traveled by myself. I got into house plants and that’s been a lot of fun. I took an art class. I did go through a pretty serious period of depression, but kept working through it—I’m proud of that. And now that I’m largely on the other side of it, I think I understand myself a bit better, and have a better sense of what I need, who I am, and what I need to do for me.

I have high hopes for 2025, and have already been working on my goals. This year, I picked the word “RESTORE” as my theme word for my goals, and honestly…I do feel restored. Writing feels good again, and I feel better about myself than I have in a long time. Next year, I am using “PRESENCE” as my theme, and have goals that fit into three categories: Focus, Sustainability, and Awareness.

Things are hard right now, and it looks like they’re going to get harder before they get easier. Even so, I am committed to putting in the work so I can be as proud of myself in December 2025 as I am here in December 2024.

What ho, readers all! I should probably blog every once in a while if I have a website, eh? But these days, my blog is my Patreon.

I guess can start this belated update with that, as my Patreon has undergone some changes of late. Earlier this year I had to say goodbye to my beloved cat companion, Toad. He had been feeling his age for a while, but then he got sick and it became time. It was tough. Toad was 16+ years old; he’d been with me for nearly 40% of my life. He moved to Colorado with me, he stayed with me when I got divorced, we spent the Covid lockdown together. He was almost famous, too, between my Patreon and his many fans on my social media. As I said when he passed away, I am sure he has already put the Devil out of a job in Hell. I miss him a lot.

My Patreon was based around pictures of him, so I’ve had to change it up a bit. I’m still posting my writing updates to my followers there, and I’ve been writing about my journey with some new houseplants. As free posts I’ve been blogging my way through my choice to buy a 50lb bag of sushi rice at Costco even though I’m a single hottie who lives alone. I’m curious to see how long it will take me to eat it all. I love short-grain rice, it’s a staple food in my house, but it’s gonna be A Thing. I’ve had some fun with onigirazu and will be making rice pudding soon.

As for my writing life, things are starting to happen again with that. This makes me happy, as I experienced a period of pretty severe burnout/loss of confidence after the publication of the third novel in my series. I’ll have some good news soon about A Big Thing soon but need to wait until the ink is dry.

But! I have other things going on, such as my being selected to write a forthcoming official Jirel of Joiry story, the first in 84 years I believe! It’s called “Jirel and the Mirror of Truth” and it will be in New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine later this year. I’m so pleased about this opportunity, it was such an honor to be asked to be the one to resurrect the First Lady of sword & sorcery. I tried my best to bring Jirel into the 21st century while retaining everything that makes Jirel Jirel if that makes sense.

I’ve also had a recent short story appear in The Sunday Morning Transport, “Eight Wedding Rings from Unhappy Marriages.” If you’d like to read it, here’s a link to a limited trial subscription though by now you may just be able to read it on the site? I’m not quite sure how it works.

As for what’s next, I’m working on a new novelette. I’m reading for the Kitschie Awards again, so that’s been a gas. I love reading for awards, it gives me such a deep appreciation for what’s current in my field. I’m mentoring for SFWA, and my latest mentee is really cool, we’ve been inspiring each other. I just last month attended ICFA, the International Conference for the Fantastical in the Arts, and that was wonderful. I saw many friends and colleagues, did a reading and a panel, and met some new and wonderful people.

Currently I’m gearing up for a workshop, and also for some travel! I’ll be attending WorldCon in Glasgow this year, and I’ll be touring Scotland before and afterward with some friends. I’ll see Inverness, Loch Ness, the Orkney Islands, and Edinburgh. I’m so very stoked. I mean, I love haggis and I hear they will put it on a pizza in Scotland, so, there it is. I’ll also be headed to the Mediterranean for the first time in 20 years. I lived in Turkey for six months back in 2002, and this year I’ll see Ephesus again, along with spending some time in Athens, Rome, and a few other little islands.

I have a few other irons in the fire. I’ve been asked to write a novelette for a forthcoming anthology, so once I finish my current story I’ll start work on that. As for longer projects, my novel and I are spending some much-needed time apart, but I hope soon to break ground on a new idea that I’ve been contemplating. Longer stuff has been hard for me, but, I’ll get there.

If you’d like to keep up with what I’m doing on a more regular basis, please follow or subscribe to my Patreon, or follow me on social media. I’m not on Twitter much these days, only sometimes to make Theodore Sturgeon jokes I guess; I’m easier to find on Instagram, BlueSky, and Facebook.

Tinkerty-tonk,

Molly

I didn’t do an end-of-year wrap-up for 2022, and now all of a sudden it’s August 9th, 2023.

Well, there’s no time like the present–not the least because I’m attending the World Fantasy Convention in Kansas City this October, and they threatened to look at my website for up-to-date information on me. So I should put some up here!

Part of my absence here has been due to just being busy! That, and I do monthly writing updates over at my Patreon. If you’d like to keep current on what’s going on in my life, that’s probably the better prospect, along with my social media: I’m on Twitter, Bluesky, and Instagram. Facebook too, but I don’t accept a lot of requests over there unless they come with a message.

So, what’s been going on? Late last year I was asked to read for the Kitschie Awards, which was an absolute gas. I read loads of books, which was a wonderful experience, and I was thrilled by the short list and the winners, which can be found at that link.

Also last year…I edited a lot of manga for both Viz and Seven Seas (just did my 75th rewrite for Seven Seas, actually!), restarted my novel (again, la!), and wrote and published a novelette in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction called “Les Chimères: An Ode,” which I think is probably the best thing I’ve written to-date. I also published a short story in Phase Change: Imagining Energy Futures.

This year…has been busy. My reading for the Kitschies ate a lot of time in the first few months. I’m in a new D&D game that is a real ripsnorter, I’m playing an Air Genasi Warlock. My cat was sick, but he seems to be doing better…he’s 16, so he’s a slower guy than he’s been in the past, but apparently he can recover from just about anything. I was invited (to my surprise) to the Sycamore Hill Writer’s Workshop and wrote a novelette for that, which after attending I revised into something that’s between a novelette and a novella. That limits its sale prospects, but it’s out on the market currently.

Now I’m back to work on my novel, and I have a whole plan for finishing it before WFC. We’ll see if I can do it.

Tinkerty-tonk,

-Molly

What ho, readers all! I should probably blog every once in a while if I have a website, eh? But these days, my blog is my Patreon.

I guess can start this belated update with that, as my Patreon has undergone some changes of late. Earlier this year I had to say goodbye to my beloved cat companion, Toad. He had been feeling his age for a while, but then he got sick and it became time. It was tough. Toad was 16+ years old; he’d been with me for nearly 40% of my life. He moved to Colorado with me, he stayed with me when I got divorced, we spent the Covid lockdown together. He was almost famous, too, between my Patreon and his many fans on my social media. As I said when he passed away, I am sure he has already put the Devil out of a job in Hell. I miss him a lot.

My Patreon was based around pictures of him, so I’ve had to change it up a bit. I’m still posting my writing updates to my followers there, and I’ve been writing about my journey with some new houseplants. As free posts I’ve been blogging my way through my choice to buy a 50lb bag of sushi rice at Costco even though I’m a single hottie who lives alone. I’m curious to see how long it will take me to eat it all. I love short-grain rice, it’s a staple food in my house, but it’s gonna be A Thing. I’ve had some fun with onigirazu and will be making rice pudding soon.

As for my writing life, things are starting to happen again with that. This makes me happy, as I experienced a period of pretty severe burnout/loss of confidence after the publication of the third novel in my series. I’ll have some good news soon about A Big Thing soon but need to wait until the ink is dry.

But! I have other things going on, such as my being selected to write a forthcoming official Jirel of Joiry story, the first in 84 years I believe! It’s called “Jirel and the Mirror of Truth” and it will be in New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine later this year. I’m so pleased about this opportunity, it was such an honor to be asked to be the one to resurrect the First Lady of sword & sorcery. I tried my best to bring Jirel into the 21st century while retaining everything that makes Jirel Jirel if that makes sense.

I’ve also had a recent short story appear in The Sunday Morning Transport, “Eight Wedding Rings from Unhappy Marriages.” If you’d like to read it, here’s a link to a limited trial subscription though by now you may just be able to read it on the site? I’m not quite sure how it works.

As for what’s next, I’m working on a new novelette. I’m reading for the Kitschie Awards again, so that’s been a gas. I love reading for awards, it gives me such a deep appreciation for what’s current in my field. I’m mentoring for SFWA, and my latest mentee is really cool, we’ve been inspiring each other. I just last month attended ICFA, the International Conference for the Fantastical in the Arts, and that was wonderful. I saw many friends and colleagues, did a reading and a panel, and met some new and wonderful people.

Currently I’m gearing up for a workshop, and also for some travel! I’ll be attending WorldCon in Glasgow this year, and I’ll be touring Scotland before and afterward with some friends. I’ll see Inverness, Loch Ness, the Orkney Islands, and Edinburgh. I’m so very stoked. I mean, I love haggis and I hear they will put it on a pizza in Scotland, so, there it is. I’ll also be headed to the Mediterranean for the first time in 20 years. I lived in Turkey for six months back in 2002, and this year I’ll see Ephesus again, along with spending some time in Athens, Rome, and a few other little islands.

I have a few other irons in the fire. I’ve been asked to write a novelette for a forthcoming anthology, so once I finish my current story I’ll start work on that. As for longer projects, my novel and I are spending some much-needed time apart, but I hope soon to break ground on a new idea that I’ve been contemplating. Longer stuff has been hard for me, but, I’ll get there.

If you’d like to keep up with what I’m doing on a more regular basis, please follow or subscribe to my Patreon, or follow me on social media. I’m not on Twitter much these days, only sometimes to make Theodore Sturgeon jokes I guess; I’m easier to find on Instagram, BlueSky, and Facebook.

Tinkerty-tonk,

Molly

The jurors for this year’s Philip K. Dick Award have been announced, and I’m honored to be among them! My life is about to become a lot more science fictional and readerly. Here’s the link to the full press release.

The Philip K. Dick Award is for distinguished science fiction published in paperback original format in the United States.

March again, hmm? Well, it might not feel like it, but a year has definitely passed. Last March, I worked up the nerve to submit a novelet to The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and this March… it’s in the issue! I’m so overwhelmed and full of gratitude.

Here’s the lovely review from Rich Horton over at Locus Magazine, who was kind enough to make it one of his Reccomended Stories:

‘In the Garden of Ibn-Ghazi’ is a fine mysterious, horror-tinged piece by Molly Tanzer. The narrator is a writer who mentions having read a story with that name, in which an attempt is made to duplicate the powder from Lovecraft’s ‘‘The Dunwich Horror’’, but no evidence of such a story can be found. Then an invitation comes from a man named Upton De Vries, to a performance of an obscure 17th-century play written by a French noblewoman, the Marquise de Sevigny. This performance will be at an obscure estate in Pennsylvania…. We are treated to a journey to this strange place, to the play, to a memoir by the rather rackety Marquise, and to an unexpected invitation not just to see the play but to act in it. Because we know this is Lovecraftian, we know that strange and sinister things will result, and so they do. The conclusion is a nice twist from what I thought at first.

That’s right, I surprised Rich Horton with the *ending*… of a Lovecraft story!! (That’s because it’s not really a Lovecraft story, it’s a story about a Lovecraft story.)

Reader, I am pleased.

You can find F&SF on bookstore shelves or on their website.

I’m pleased to announce Creatures of Charm and Hunger has made the 2020 Locus Recommended Reading List! Please click through to see all the amazing novels, stories, editors, and artists in the various categories.

Anyone can vote in the Locus Poll! You don’t have to be a subscriber. So, if you’d like to help me out by voting for Creatures of Charm and Hunger (in the Fantasy Novel category), please click here. It’s ranked choice, so you can vote for a lot of the fantastic books you read last year.

Thanks, and hang in there everybody!

What did I publish this year? Not a whole heck of a lot. And that’s okay.

In the early months of 2020 I realized I was experiencing textbook symptoms of burnout. Writing–my refuge, my obsession, my passion, my life!–felt hard and sometimes even aggravating. I avoided it for no reason. I wasn’t happy. I was looking forward to seeing my trilogy conclude once and for all, given how fraught it had been for me creatively, emotionally, and publishing-wise. I started working on my dream project (still am), but it wasn’t gelling. I pivoted to working on a novella, which I set aside. And then the pandemic hit, and nothing felt good… except for when I turned my eyes to my manga adaptation work. There, I could let go. I could freely compose and correct without the same sort of anxiety I was experiencing when working on my own stuff. It was glorious weightless, like floating in a warm deep bathtub.

It was hard not to get angry with myself. “I used to have so much to say, what happened!” “What’s wrong with me, everyone else is cranking out pages and pages of prose!” “I have so much time on my hands, what am I even doing with it all!?” These sorts of thoughts did not help me at all, of course. And they weren’t even true, not really. When things clicked, when I was hard at work on my new novel, I felt great. But I couldn’t stay in that place. I fell out of it so easily. The world was the world, endlessly distracting and dismaying.

It wasn’t until I hurt my high hamstring that I finally realized I’d been missing a piece of it all. To rehabilitate my hamstring, I had to take time off to let it heal, and then I had to get back into yoga slowly, gently, compassionately, without judgment, without pressure. I had to notice when I was in pain and back off immediately, baby the injury, and then try again when it felt better. Because I did all that, I’m back on the mat–with caution–and feeling good. My high hamstring still gives me guff, but I can work with it and work around it. And I’m doing better at incorporating supportive therapies too, like walking and pilates.

Thinking about all of this made me wonder if I could apply this process to my brain, too. At first, I resisted a little–my hamstring is a physical part of my body, it can’t be reasoned with. But the truth is, my mind is a physical part of my body too.

I have a lot of things coming out next year–the re-release of my backlist through Word Horde, a novelette in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, a bunch of manga adaptations. I hope to finish my ongoing novel, and to get back into regularly working on shorter fiction. But we’ll see what happens. I thought I had plans for 2020 but really it was 2020 that had plans for me. So I’m approaching 2021 with caution.

Anyway, my two original fiction publications this year were:

Creatures of Charm and Hunger. John Joseph Adams Books/Mariner, April 2020.

“Summer Camp Would Have Been a Lot Cheaper.” In Evil in Technicolor, edited by Joe M. McDermott. Vernacular Books, October 2020.

Manga-wise, you’re seeing it. The Drifting Classroom, vols. 2 and 3, Levius/est vols. 6 and 7, and Super Mario Manga Mania.

See you in the future, y’all.