2018 was one wild ride of a year for me. I published my first chapbook. I took many workshops, attended many conferences, and met many new friends. I wrote a lot of things and learned a great deal while writing. 

I've been thinking about how the new year is an arbitrary date. We tell ourselves that it's time to rethink what we've done and to plan for the future. But the truth is that writing is always there. It's a well of creativity that you constantly have to refill, rethink, and renegotiate. As arbitrary as it might be, I love the new year. I love the idea that I might be able to make a difference in my future just by the power of positive thinking. 

In the words of Ursula K. Le Guin, we need to "see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope.”

I hope your new year is fantastic and full of all the things you love and enjoy. I hope we make it to next year feeling a bit less angry about the world. 

Here's what I wrote in 2018: 

• Glimmerglass Girl, Finishing Line Press 

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I published several speculative poems eligible for the Rhysling Award: 

• Star*Line 41.4 (October 2018) - "A Terrible Meat Eating God"
• Liminality Issue #17 (Autumn 2018) - "Dead-Eye Girl" 
• Nice Cage (Issue 006, Climate Change And/Or Die, Summer/Spring 2018) - "Boll Heart," "And Farther Death Goes," "A Deep Enough Abyss" 
• Really System(Issue 19: Stymy a Seller, Summer 2018)- "Orbital Debris" 
• Undead: A Poetry Anthology of Ghouls, Ghosts, and More (Apex Book Company, July 17, 2018) - "Sea Fog"

I also published a few realist poems this year: 

• Texas Poetry Calendar 2019 (Kallisto Gaia Press, 2018) - "Dear Childhood"
• Terse Journal (Oct. 3, 2018) - "What it Feels Like to Play Video Games as a Woman" 
• "Erasure" (after Ralph Waldo Emerson) - in ARTHouston Magazine Issue#7 (September 2018) 
• Storyscape (Issue 20, July 2018) - "A Woman" (erasure of William Faulkner)and "She was a Nice Little Nothing" (erasure of Jack Kerouac) 
• ​Isacoustic, April 14, 2018 -  "espejitos"

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I'm particularly proud to have published several stories in pro-paying publications this year. The following stories are awards eligible:

• Daily Science Fiction (August 13, 2018) - After the First Comes the Last
• Robots & Artificial Intelligence Short Stories (Flame Tree Publishing, September 2018) - Stardust
• Fireside Magazine (February 2018) - knick knack, knick knack

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Here are the essays and reviews I published this year:

• ​Cotton Xenomorph (9/17/18) - ​YUM-DERDOME: Oh My Sweet Pickle Babies
  
• Up the Staircase (8/1/18) Review: Dear Judas by Melissa Jennings
  
• Trish Hopkinson's Blog (7/29/18) 6 Resources for Submitting Your Work
  
• Cotton Xenomorph (6/21/18) Manifestos: Six Principles of Flash Fiction
  
• ​Entropy Magazine (6/15/18) Review: Consolation Prize by Tyler Robert Sheldon 

That's it! Whew! As per usual, I am supremely grateful to the editors who continue to support my work and think it's worthwhile enough to grace the pages, or cyberspaces, of their publications. 

I have one more thing to be grateful for. This December, I decided to finally launch a small press and magazine. Now, there's not much to share right now as the ink is not quite dry yet on this new venture, but I promise to post soon about my plans. 

Now, who's ready for 2019? Let's do this.

As the end of the year draws to a close, I'd like to share with you the works I published in 2017 that I'm proud of. 2017 was a great year for me and I'm so grateful to the editors who have taken my work under their wings. I wrote a lot more experimental poetry this year, which people seem to enjoy, and I published my first full-length story, which was pretty exciting to me. 

If you've read my work or nominated it in the past, I am truly truly thankful. I couldn't get by without the support of my amazing writer friends and the writing community as a whole. 

• "Confessions of a Supermassive Black Hole" (Short Poem, Dwarf Stars Eligible) in Grievous Angel, October 12, 2017 
• "We Have Always Lived" (Short poem) in Nonbinary Review, Issue#15 (November)*
• "Anvil Crawler" (Short poem) in ARTHouston Magazine, Issue#5, Sept. 2017 
• "The Hearts of Robots" (Short poem) in Dreams & Nightmares Magazine, Sept 2017, Issue #107*
• "​Lace at the Throat" (Short poem, Dwarf Star Eligible) in 2017 SFPA Poetry Contest.
• "How I Lost My Chastity" (Short poem) in Liminality Magazine, Issue #13, Autumn 2017
• "Dear Shotgun City" (Short poem) in Eye to the Telescope, Issue 25: July 2017, Theme: Garbage
• ​"My City of Ruin" (Short poem) in Mithila Review, Issue 8, April, 2017
• "Lunar Girl Drinks Poetry from the Stars" (Short poem) in Mithila Review, Issue 8, April, 2017
• "Grayslick" (Short poem) in By & By Poetry, Issue 7
• "Spring Will Come Again" (Short poem) in Abyss & Apex, Issue 62: 2nd Quarter 2017)
• "Pine Song, Robin Song, Star Song" (Short poem) in Liminality, Issue #11: Spring 2017
• "Madness" (Short poem) in Crab Fat Magazine, March 2017
• "Ship of Jinn" (Short poem) in Kaleidotrope, Winter 2017

Long Poems:

• "Bird House" (Long poem) in ​Strange Horizons, August 7, 2017
• "Reflection" (Long poem) in Mithila Review, Issue 8, April, 2017

*Poems noted with an asterisk are not available online. If you'd like a copy, email me.

​While I didn't publish anything that was specifically eligible for a fiction award, I still want to share my story, The Joy of Baking, which appeared in Luna Station Quarterly  (Issue 030, July 2017).

It’s amazing how much easier it is to bake a cake when you’ve got an eternity to get it right. The secret to effective baking is patience, followed by the ability to fold the batter with a metal spoon instead of rushing in with a wooden spoon like a hammer. The folding in must be gentle so as not to break the hard-earned bubbles of air. Lastly, a baker must have the willingness to guard the oven, your feet cold on the tile, letting the warm scents of butter and vanilla envelop you and seep into the whole house, holding your breath while the batter rises, goldens, and browns slightly at the edges... read more

For a full list of publications go here. 

The following poems are Rhysling Awards Eligible: 

​For my full publication history, click here. 

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