After a rough start to the year, I have some unexpectedly awesome news to share: I���m one of just six ���anchor��� authors selected for Ansible Press���s Year���s Best Canadian Fantasy and Science Fiction: Volume 3!

It���s a huge honour just to be included, much less as a featured author, and based on the past editions, the 2024 collection is sure to be overflowing with stunning speculative fiction spanning a range of sci-fi, fantasy, and horror subgenres by the best Canadian talent writing today.

A Kickstarter is running in April (already funded in the first hour!) with some cool stretch goals including custom illustrations, translations, and speculative poetry, and backers get early copies in Aug.-Sep. (Public launch is at CanCon in October and it���ll hit stores in November.)

Fun coincidence: I was reviewing the previous years��� collections for my upcoming talk at STA Convention when I got the news! Speaking of, here���s a quick-ref list of upcoming events:

Meet Me At: April 28: UFV Young Writers��� Conference, Chilliwack Author AMA + Interactive Storytelling for Middle Schoolers (by invitation/public school program) May 2: Surrey Teachers��� Association Convention Teaching Current Canadian Short Fiction to Today���s (& Tomorrow���s) Teens (STA members) May 28: BC Library Association Youth and Children���s Services Section (Remote) Local Author Collabs: Working with BC Kid-Lit Creators (BCLA/YAACS members) July 20-26: Creative Writing Camp, Seoul Week-long ���Underworld/Otherworlds��� theme intensive creative writing camp and anthology project for kids and teens led with two other professional authors in South Korea. Enquire about registration with CWC. July 28-31: Library Visits, Seoul Author visits in South Korea, TBA. Enquire to schedule one with CWC. List of locations to come. October 25: BC Teacher-Librarians��� Association Fall Conference, Vancouver Read Local, Teach Local: Resources for Incorporating BC Books Into the Classroom (BCTLA members)

(I���ll be on the mainland April 27-May 3 and possibly again for that week in October, so for anyone in the Metro Vancouver & Fraser Valley region in need of author visits/school/library etc. bookings, it���s a good time to nab one with no additional travel fees!)

Last Call for Auroras!

If you���re reading for any of the speculative short fiction awards (& especially the Auroras, closing soon!), I���d love for you to consider my work from last year. I had a record year in short fiction publishing with SEVEN publications (5 new + 2 reprint).

My awards-eligible new speculative fiction for 2024:

5,300-word Canadian ghost town/cryptid/ecopunk horror ���The Tangle (Did Not Kill Kitsault)��� in STRANGE HORIZONS July 1 edition 550-word slipstream/fantasy-meets-neurodivergence flash ���Mud Maidens Rise��� in LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE Issue 171 (incl. ���audiobook��� version!) 3,600-word ���Year���s Best Canadian���, Commonwealth Short Story Prize longlisted & Writers of the Future Awards Semi-Finalist ghost story about fentanyl, faith & family abandonment, ���The Patron Saint of Flatliners��� in MYSTERION 3,100-word humorous SF-lite adventure about humidfier scum escaping cleaning and the inevitable downfall of all colonial ambitions, ���The Pink Slime���s Appointment With Destiny��� in PULPHOUSE FICTION MAGAZINE Issue 31 1,600-word eerie, anti-capitalist, Twilight Zone-esque horror podcast/audio-adaptation (only) ���Hollow��� on THE NOSLEEP PODCAST Season 20 Episode 17

Time for just one? I get the most love for The Tangle (Did Not Kill Kitsault) & The Patron Saint of Flatliners but Hollow & Mud Maidens Rise are nice and short if you���re rushing!

���If I���m honest, all the love for The Patron Saint of Flatliners feels a little weird. I���ve written about it at length in the author���s note blog, but that story came out of a place of such anger and helplessness, and also too much truth.

I very nearly didn���t publish it. I worried���I still worry���about doing justice, bearing witness to the real, whole, human life that was lived and lost. Now, more than ever, as adult literacy rates plummet and Trump fabricates lies about fentanyl trafficking from (instead of into?!!) Canada to justify his colonial ambitions, I fear the weight of eliding complex realities under a sheen of SFF allure. Does it make a difference? Does it capture any truth? Does it push back against the march of fascism? Does it shine a light, open a window, unchain a mind? All questions for any fiction, certainly, but writing so heavily inspired by real life feels particularly fraught.

It���s probably the moment, too. The stakes feel higher than ever. Not just ���feel������we���re in, if not unprecedent times, at least genuinely fraught ones. Hate is strong, organized, well-capitalized, and has shiny, savvy publicity, for all its ugliness. Intersecting threats in environment, health, politics, global security, race, gender, and sex-based-violence are all escalating. This is the opposite of what we need for human thriving. This is the wrong direction, the opposite of where we need to be headed to change the trajectory of lives like the one The Patron Saint of Flatliners was based on. We will see more self-harming, addiction, overdosing and contamination/poisoning of both illegal and legal food and drug (and environmental) supply chains as we continue along this path.

But hate is also weak. It is pathetic and malformed weird in the worst way. It can be defeated. Even now, in all ways, in all places, at all levels, we are rising to defeat it, hearts and minds, hands and feet, voices uniting to call for a world better than this one.

As I write this, US Senator Cory Booker passed the 24 hour mark and soon after broke the (horrifying racist���s) record for longest speech, standing up against tyranny. His feat is remarkable on several counts, but there are thousands upon thousands of us who have been, are, and will continue to work for love and stand against hate, each as we are able, as much as we are able, in whichever and as many ways as we are able.

Choose life and love over hate and death, and keep choosing it. That���s really what I have to say, if you take away all the fun, shiny, speculative stuff. Sorry to be cringe on main, I guess. But we���ve got only so much time here, and I want it to be better for all of us. Hope you do too.