Year in Review, Part the First: The Personal Stuff

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Okay, so apart from the horrors at the national and international level, my 2025 was defined by the following events:

• My wife and partner of 29 years, bookbinder and conservator Jana Pullman, died in February after a 5 year struggle with dementia (the same week as my mom's birthday, which will be super fun this year).
  
• My boy kitty, Shu, got diagnosed with feline diabetes requiring multiple insulin injections per day at the ripe old age of 15 in early March.
• I was awarded a 2025 Alice B. Readers Award in March. This is an anonymous juried award for an author's body of work in sapphic fiction, nonfiction, poetry and/or drama. Previous winners have included such "lightweights" as Joanna Russ, Dorothy Allison and this year, Emma Donoghue. I was floored and thrilled and floored again. It is a lovely thing and it made my year much better.
• In June, my friend Anne Shaw died unexpectedly (I didn't find out about it until several weeks later, for reasons I won't go into now) and I miss her a lot. Other folks who passed in 2025 who were friends/colleagues to one degree or another: bi activist and organizer Lou Hoffman; poet and WisCon/organizer.volunteer Terry Garey; and Tiptree Award/WisCon/lots of other things artist Freddie Baer.
• In July, my IT contract ended (this was expected). But in the ensuing months of unemployment, it has become clear that between my age, the fact that I have to work remotely due to kitty care needs and changes in the job market, I am probably involuntarily retired from IT after 25 years. I have some mixed feels, but acknowledge that I was completely and utterly burned out and that, money aside, it is time for a change.
• I started writing fiction again! And nonfiction! I had a new story up at Heather Rose Jones's LHMPodcast, "An Encounter with a Lady" and an short nonfiction piece at New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine, "Joanna Russ: Sword & Sorcery Pioneer?" I will have a second nonfiction piece out in New Edge in 2026, "Thula the Maid and Her Creator," date TBD. Thanks to embracing the writing sprint model, I currently have 2 short stories, a novella and the next werewolf novel in progress.
• I am knuckling down on making Queen of Swords Press profitable enough to pay me on a considerably more regular basis, to which end, I have enrolled in the State of Minnesota's CLIMB Program for entrepreneurs and Hennepin County's Elevate program, which does small business mentoring. I am also attending a crap ton of  classes and such and am trying to spin up an editing business (hire me!). You can also check out my Ko-fi store for sundry workshops, coaching, downloadable things to read, boxes by Jana, etc. 
• I set myself a goal of doing one new thing and one thing that I hadn't done since before lockdown in 2020 each month. This included some travel adventures: a weekend in Red Wing, MN, at a historic hotel by myself; going to Seattle Worldcon and coming back by sleeper car with friends on the train; and flying first class for the first time in my life to Readercon in Boston. I've also been visiting new to me places around the Twin Cities, like Raspberry Island for the Alebrijes show this summer, and places I keep meaning to check out again, like the new location of the Somali Museum of Minnesota and the Landmark Center in St. Paul. Lately, I've been working on making some new friends as well as connecting with my old ones.
• I continued with my weekly online movement and isolation dance/exercise class with local Middle Eastern Dance maven, Cassandra Shore (apparently, I can now "Shimmy Like Your Sister Kate" at a very basic level). I found a massage therapist I really like. Apart from ongoing pain issues and the occasional migraine, I'm pretty healthy.
• I'm ending this year with some hopeful financial news, which is lovely. So overall, a very mixed bag of year from devastating to stupendous and back again.

Next up, publishing news!