Dwelling in Probabilities

• 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.
• Over the summer, Jana was awarded the first posthumous Laura Young Award for Service to the Guild of Bookworkers. I wasn't able to swing going to Iowa City for it due the job situation and the need to pay for cat sitting, so other folks were kind enough to deliver my speech on her behalf and bring back the award. Thanks to Parry, Madelyn and Chris!
• 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 started a 3 part series of classes at the University of Minnesota to get a certification in Data Analytics in October. I aced the first one so here's hoping I can do as well on the next two classes!
• 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.

• Jana's dad, Charles, passed away right before Labor Day weekend. I only met him once (at her mom's funeral and memorial) and didn't have a ton of contact with him, but he did get pretty supportive in the last couple of years and I'll miss for her sake. He died at home in his own bed, surrounded by loved ones and with decent medical care and he went when he was ready to go so I think it was a good passing. J seems more disoriented than usual and does occasionally mention him in a way that indicates that she knows he's no longer around. Hopefully, that gets easier soon.
• I got to fill out a bunch of paperwork for her examination by the country to determine whether or not she is sufficiently disabled to require assistance. The social worker seemed pretty clear on that, but there is, of course, several month's worth of backlog and one of the more immediately useful things would have been money for adult daycare...which she has already gotten herself kicked out of. She is being...extra right now so I'm hoping it's mostly her dad's passing and not a whole new phase of "extra" because I'm getting worn out.
• We're getting a new roof and gutters due to massive hail damage and it will be happening soon, because everything must happen this month.
• My new recliner arrives on Thursday. My hip and leg have not stopped screaming for weeks and have responded to absolutely nothing so here's hoping this is a big help.
• Have managed to spend some quality time with friends, which has been lovely and pagan pride was fun until we got sort of rained out (just enough to drive people out of the park and require tarping up, not enough to help the drought much). I'm off to table at St. Cloud Pride this weekend so hopefully that goes smoothly.
• Saw "Bottoms" and thought it was amusing.
• Doing a little tiny bit of writing and working on getting the next Lynes & Mathey title by Melissa Scott and Amy Griswold out by December. Also, working on my talk on LGBTQ+ publishing for Quatrefoil. And dayjobbing like a dayjobbing thing.

On the personal level (next post), 2021 was pretty traumatic, but on a small press level, it was stupendous. Post the first is here, post the second follows.

As a writer, I:

• saw my novel, Blood Moon, out into the world. Moar menopausal werewolves, found family and other fun stuff! Reader response has been good so far and it gained an Honorable Mention at the Rainbow Awards.
• I saw a new story in my ongoing serial about queer female pirates and spies in the 17th Century Caribbean up at Heather Rose Jone’s Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast! Check out "The Adventuress" here.
• My story, “A Cry in the Night,” appeared in the latest World of Darkness game book, Ghost Hunters,  marking my first in-game appearance. 
• I had articles at Library Journal and Dream Foundry as well as a short essay in Mark My Words: read the Submissions Guidelines and Other Self-Editing Tips edited by Lee Murray and Angela Yuriko Smith (produced for Stoker Con).
• I got my first writing grant for a queer horror project from the Ladies of Horror Fiction.
• I also saw 2 Emily L Byrne reprints appear on the Nobilis Erotica Podcast: "Heart's Thief" and "Diplomacy."
• I also wrote 4 new chapters and a guide to my novel in progress, plus a couple of short stories and an essay for my Patreon, which supports Queen of Swords Press.
• I taught 8 workshops at the Rambo Academy, Springboard for the Arts and the Novel in Progress Bookcamp, appeared on the WROTE Podcast, the Writers Drinking Coffee Podcast, multiple webcasts, 5 online conventions and a couple of online readings and FB groups. Also, my first two gaming conventions and an short clip for the Edelweiss Bookfest. And Skepticon, the Pride StoryBundle (co-curator), the Story Hour, FAE Productions, two book festivals and more! It was a lot.

Publishing Me:

• Queen of Swords Press put out 3 books in 2021: Blood Moon, Foxhunt by Rem Wigmore and Obviously, Aliens by Jennie Goloboy
• We have our own new chai tea blend from my fabulous local tea shop, Bingley's Teas.
• Our 2020 title, The Voyages of Cinrak the Dapper by A.J. Fitzwater won a Sir Julius Vogel Award for Best Collection, was a Runner Up for Best LGBTQ Collection and for Best Lesbian Book at the Rainbow Awards and was a featured title at Edelweiss Bookfest.
• Foxhunt earned a starred review in Publishers Weekly, was included as an essential work of solarpunk fiction in this Tor.com piece on "The Solarpunk Future," and was a Runner Up for Best Transgender Book and Best Transgender Science Fiction at the Rainbow Awards.
• We all participated in a r/Fantasy Small Press AMA (first time!).
• Between us, we did a whole bunch of literary festivals, online cons, online readings, panels and more.
• Queen of Swords Press had our first university intern, the awesome Shannon, who helped Alexa and me get a ton of stuff done.
• Laya Rose and Terry Roy created amazing covers and book design for us.
• DragonByte/Andi C. Buchanan redesigned our website to make it scalable and added Square payments.
• We doubled the size of our mailing list, added direct preorders and nearly doubled our sales from 2020.

I am so, so proud of all the work we've done and the books we've put out! I hope you'll give them and us a try as we enter our 6th year!