Publication and Sales in 2023
Jan. 1st, 2024 10:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
p_h_leeIn last year's post, I noted that I was going to have less publications in 2023 because I had less sales in 2022. Boy was I right!
I published three short stories in 2023:
How to Serve the Dead: A Confucian Alternate History, in The Cosmic Background
Ji Lu asked how to serve the dead. "You are yet unable to serve the living," Confucius replied. "How can you serve the dead?"
Ji Lu then asked about death. "You do not yet understand life," Confucius replied. "How can you understand death?"
The Greatest Home Run in Baseball History, in Strange Horizons
I want to tell you that this doesn’t matter, even though that would probably only make things worse. I want to say that this doesn’t matter because I love you, that it doesn’t matter because we’ll just get some takeout that we can’t afford, that it doesn’t matter because we’re going to break up in a year and eventually we’ll learn to communicate and become good friends, but most of all I want to tell you that this does not matter because forty-nine years from now Basal McMurdo is going to hit the greatest home run in baseball history.
Megabot vs. The Lingering Trauma of Parental Abandonment, in fuckit #15.
"It's not just me!" she says to Bot Blue. "Do you realize you're literally the only member of the team that has any parents at all?"
I sold five stories in 2023, higher than three in 2022, but nowhere near the peaks of 2020 and 2021. I think that, given that I'm trying to finish a novel every year, five is a pretty comfortable average place for short fiction. I do want to try to transition to novels (my big writing accomplishment this year was finishing and submitting what I think is my most accessible, commercial novel to date), but I don't want to leave short fiction behind entirely.
2024 is going to see the publication of some stories that I'm frankly a little scared about. But I am trying to transition to a psychological and career place where I have to worry less about getting dog-piled on twitter and more worried about expressing what I want to express through art. We'll see how that goes.
I published three short stories in 2023:
How to Serve the Dead: A Confucian Alternate History, in The Cosmic Background
Ji Lu asked how to serve the dead. "You are yet unable to serve the living," Confucius replied. "How can you serve the dead?"
Ji Lu then asked about death. "You do not yet understand life," Confucius replied. "How can you understand death?"
The Greatest Home Run in Baseball History, in Strange Horizons
I want to tell you that this doesn’t matter, even though that would probably only make things worse. I want to say that this doesn’t matter because I love you, that it doesn’t matter because we’ll just get some takeout that we can’t afford, that it doesn’t matter because we’re going to break up in a year and eventually we’ll learn to communicate and become good friends, but most of all I want to tell you that this does not matter because forty-nine years from now Basal McMurdo is going to hit the greatest home run in baseball history.
Megabot vs. The Lingering Trauma of Parental Abandonment, in fuckit #15.
"It's not just me!" she says to Bot Blue. "Do you realize you're literally the only member of the team that has any parents at all?"
I sold five stories in 2023, higher than three in 2022, but nowhere near the peaks of 2020 and 2021. I think that, given that I'm trying to finish a novel every year, five is a pretty comfortable average place for short fiction. I do want to try to transition to novels (my big writing accomplishment this year was finishing and submitting what I think is my most accessible, commercial novel to date), but I don't want to leave short fiction behind entirely.
2024 is going to see the publication of some stories that I'm frankly a little scared about. But I am trying to transition to a psychological and career place where I have to worry less about getting dog-piled on twitter and more worried about expressing what I want to express through art. We'll see how that goes.
