2024 roundup

How the flipping heck is it almost December again? It seems like no time at all since I was writing last year’s roundup and here we are again. And so much has happened this year, I hardly know where to start with it all. But I’ll give it a go.

Fiction-wise, in 2024 I had two novellas, two anthologies and four short stories published, as well as a couple of notable reprints.

Charlie Says, my take on urban folk horror, came out from Black Shuck Books in February. The response to this wee book has been amazing. People seem really to have got what I was aiming for and been happy to come along for the ride, and I’m so grateful for that. This was an important book for me. The response has really validated my pivot back to dark fiction again.

I was super grateful too that editor, Ian Whates, offered to serialise my other novella, The Packet, in issues 11-13 of ParSec Magazine. This one is a science fiction story that starts off as a Scottish emigration historical, and the story itself has had a long route to publication so I’m really happy 2024 was the year it reached its destination. Issues 11 and 12 are already out and issue 13 will likely be with us in January.

A substantial portion of the year was spent editing two anthologies which were launched at the World Science Fiction Convention in Glasgow in August. I edited Nova Scotia vol 2 with Andrew J Wilson, and we were privileged to be able to select stories from the absolute cream of the Scottish genre community. And Gallus, co-edited by EM Faulds and Brian M Milton, was a showcase for the work of the Glasgow SF Writers’ Circle, some of whom were old hands and others being published for the very first time. Both are mixed genre anthologies, and both sold out at the convention! No little thanks for that is due to the talents of cover artist, Jenni Coutts.

Worldcon itself was just awesome. It was warm, engaged, and incredibly well run, and I was in my element turning up every day and blethering on about Scottish writing to anyone who’d stop and listen.

I had a couple of short stories of my own in those anthologies too. A flash piece, Midnight Flit was in Nova Scotia vol 2, and a longer Glasgow story, A Visitor By Rainlight, in Gallus. And this year will also have seen a couple more pieces in my weird bequests series enter the fray. The Death Trap came out in the venerable print mag, Not One Of Us, in June, and A Folded Letter is due out in the Winter 2024 edition of Chthonic Matter Quarterly very soon.

I was delighted to discover that Ellen Datlow had included last year’s story, The Salted Bones, in her annual Best Horror of the Year anthology (a first for me, and an absolute honour) and also mentioned A Little Seasoning and An Antique Puzzle Chest Of Unknown Provenance in her traditional recommended reading list. It was also wonderful to have the chance to show off Bunting to a wider audience with its reprinting in The Dark.

What do we have lined up for fiction in 2025? Well, quite a lot already in fact. The Family Axe comes out in Boreal, an anthology of foresty horror stories published by Strange Wilds Press in February. The Cold Case is lined up to appear in an anthology titled Absolute Zero. And I’ve sold another bequests story, in which toxic masculinity get dragged into the spotlight and given a severe doing. That one is titled, Her Little Ray Of Sunshine, and will be appearing in an as-yet-undiscosed-but-I’m-hecking-excited-about-it magazine early in 2025.

And as if that wasn’t enough, I did February Album Writing Month again. This year I wrote a bunch of songs inspired by titles stolen from other media. It’s called Borrowed Breath and you can listen to them on Bandcamp if you like. I mean, all the DSC albums are on streaming too, but that’s not nearly so cool, is it?

So all in all, it might have felt like the blink of an eye, but 2024 was a LOT. Thanks to everyone who read, listened, published, helped and boosted along the way. I don’t think I’ve ever felt validated as much as I have this year, and I’m beyond grateful for that.

I’m going to need that self-belief if I’m going to produce the two novels and one horror anthology I have planned in 2025.